BAIL OUT! BAIL OUT!

When a young naval instructor and his pupil — a trainee flight cadet from Indian Air Force — marched across the tarmac to their aircraft on 21 November 2003, little did they know they would be ‘walking the wing’ a few minutes later.

- KP SANJEEV KUMAR

In the Air Force Academy, an important tally is squared off at the end of a normal training shift — the number of take-offs must equal number of landings. It was not to be for this crew.

What happened

The aircraft they were planned to fly that day was Hindustan Aeronautics Limited’s HPT-32 (Hindustan Piston Trainer), also called Deepak (‘lamp’ in Hindi, a language widely spoken in India) — a basic trainer aircraft (BTA) with side by side seating, powered by a single Lycoming AEO-540-D4B5 piston engine. The HPT-32 first flew in 1977 and was inducted into the IAF to replace the HT-2, another basic trainer from HAL’s stable.

Engine emergency in climb out

The take-off was uneventful. The HPT-32 is a slow climber and their allotted sector was still miles away. In a climbing turn to the desired radial, at a height of about 3 000 feet (altitude about 4 500 feet above sea level), a sudden squirt of oil from the engine splashed onto the windscreen. It can get cold at that altitude in the local flying area of Air Force Academy (AFA) in southern India. The splashed oil quickly congealed on the windscreen, severely restricting forward visibility. It was no longer “ops normal” — the instructor-pilot was facing a potential engine emergency with an ab-initio flying trainee.