IAF to zero in on causes, day after wreckage removed

After the wreckage of Sukhoi-30 MKI fighter aircraft was moved on Wednesday night from the farm near Theur, where it crashed, Air Force officers said they had started to zero in on the possible causes and would soon come to a conclusion in the court of inquiry (CoI).
The Sukhoi, which was a regular training sortie, crashed on a farm about 200m from a human settlement in Kolawadi village near Theur around 5.30 pm on October 14. The two IAF pilots – Wing Commander Siddharth Munje and Flying Officer Anup Kumar – ejected to safety in Ashtapur village, 2 km from the site. No one was injured on ground.

As a fallout of the crash in Pune, IAF on Wednesday declared its decision to ground the entire fleet of the Russian-made fighter.
An officer from the Pune Air Force station, who did not wish to be named, said, “In such cases, as the court of inquiry proceeds, we rule out various possible causes to zero in on reasons that led to the incident. Even if we find one cause during the course of investigation, it is important that all other possible causes are ruled out before we conclude.”

Earlier, Newsline had reported that flight findings from data recorder had pointed to a technical snag and not human error. The IAF said on Wednesday that the fleet of about 200 Su-30s would be back in air only after they were cleared in the technical review.

IAF teams were facing difficulty in pulling out the wreckage as the soil it crashed into was soft. Uttam Gaikwad, the farmer in whose field the aircraft had crashed, said, “A panchnama of the site was done in the presence of Air Force officers. They promised that I would be compensated for the damage of crop caused due to the crash.”