A Deccan Aviation chopper sent from Bangalore to look for YSR's had to return to base due to poor visibility levels
A Deccan Aviation chopper sent from Bangalore to look for YSR's had to return to base due to poor visibility levels
The Deccan Aviation chopper that went to look for Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy's helicopter, was forced to return due to bad weather.
The Bangalore-based chopper service sent an AF355 F1 twin-engine helicopter at 2 pm, on the request of the Andhra Pradesh government. It took off from Begumpet to fly to Nallamalla forest near Kurnool, where the Bell 430 helicopter VT-APG that carried five people including Reddy was last seen. However, the search team had to return in an hour due to bad weather.
"It was raining heavily and visibility was bad," said Captain G R Gopinath, managing director, Deccan Aviation. "The search operation can only resume on Thursday morning."
He said the chopper was stationed at Begumpet and he would send it if the government sought its service.
Ground operations still on
The Deccan chopper joined three helicopters of the Air Force in the afternoon even as ISRO's National Remote Sensing Centreu00a0 (NRSC) in Hyderabad sent a Beach Craft for the search operation.
But they were of little help, given the inclement weather.
"Calling off the aerial search was inevitable," said Raghuram Raghavendra, commercial head, Deccan Charters Limited. "However, the ground rescue operation is on."
Gopinath says the chopper could have made an emergency landing due to bad weather and had lost contact since its radio device had no range and Reddy did not carry a satellite phone.
"I hope the chopper has not crashed but imagining the situation is worse than the fact," he said. " We can only pray for their safe return."
If the weather clears, the search choppers will comb the route, sector by sector, said Raghuram. Once the chopper is located, victims can be airlifted or rescued through ground operations.
ISRO chips in
Meanwhile, the Indian Space Research Organisation in Bangalore is helping by providing high-resolution images of the terrain. But the images are not clear enough to help identify ground objects.
"We have taken some 40 satellite images of the forest area with the help of a low-flying aircraft," said an ISRO official. "The pictures are being analysed at NRSC. By Thursday morning, we should have something to say regarding this."
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