Saras: Experiment turns into accident

Yet-to-be-identified technical failure cropped up leading to the dreadful crash
in Bidadi

Minutes before it crashed, the ill-fated Saras aircraft was carrying out an experiment on how to save the plane in case it catches a fire mid-air.On the afternoon of March 6, the task for the IAF pilots was to find out how the light transport aircraft–developed at the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), Bangalore–will behave if one of the engines suddenly caught a fire.They simulated the experiment. Assuming one of the engines in the twin-engine plane is on flame, the Indian Air Force test pilots killed the other engine as a security precaution. That was the experiment drill. Stopping the engine led to the plane’s free fall for some seconds. Those seconds are supposed to have been utilised by the pilots to address the fire problem before they again took control of the plane. They switched on the engines to halt the free fall. The engines came back to life but some other yet-to-be identified technical failure cropped up leading to the dreadful crash, sources told Deccan Herald.

Black boxes

The two black boxes have been sent to a UK-based company for analysis as Indian laboratories do not have facilities to analyse that kind of black boxes. The UK firm may take another few months to give its report.Another reason for the deadly crash was Bangalore’s increasing population. The plane took off from the HAL airport and crashed near Bidadi, 26 km south from the heart of the city.Sources said that the pilots tried their best to locate an isolated area for a safer landing to minimise damage to the people. Unfortunately, they could not locate such a spot and lost precious time in the process. Those valuable minutes could have saved the pilots and the flight engineer’s lives.

In the wake of the crash, scientists are wondering if future tests of Saras or any other aircraft could be carried out towards relatively-less populated Jakkur side in the north of the city as flight testing is always a risky business.The indigenous civilian plane was under development since the last two decades. It began in the early 1990s as collaboration with Russia. But Moscow backed out after a few years. The project kick-started again in 1999–one year after US-imposed sanctions post Pokhran-II–and immediately became a victim leading to time and cost overrun. The first flight took place in May, 2004. The NAL made two prototypes of the plane so far out of which the second one crashed. The aircraft has 500 kg excess weight, which the scientists plan to bring down.

Posted in: India,transport aircraft