YSR’s Chopper Not Checked before Flight: Report
The mystery about crash of the aircraft that was carrying former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S R Reddy, his secretary, security officer and two pilots is beginning to clear up, reported CNN-IBN.
A four-member panel, which was formed after the crash to look into the case, said that the chopper was probably not airworthy when it took off from Hyderabad on September 2, 2009; however, it said that it was not a contributing factor to the accident, said report.
The panel said that bad weather and strong winds forced the pilots into a descent they could not manage, said report.
“The probable cause of the accident is – accident occurred due to loss of control resulting in uncontrolled descent in the terrain at a very high rate of descent due to entry into severe down draught,” the report said.
The report of the Director General of Civil Aviation – the country’s aviation regulator, said that the cockpit voice recorder, an instrument which records conversation between pilots and the air traffic controller, reveals that pilot found a snag in copter’s gear box.
It said that fixing the gearbox could have saved six minutes and that emergency location transmitter was ill equipped. It further said that chopper was not checked by maintenance crew before it took off.
