CHALLENGES BEFORE HAL'S EXPORT POTENTIAL

Despite the sad history of helicopters it has made and the allegations of corruption involving some of its former officials, who are now under the radar of the investigating agencies, SHREYA MUNDHRA writes how the present leadership of the HAL is optimistic of its products finding markets abroad

Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has a long list of fatal helicopter crashes. Last month, there was another unfortunate addition to this list. On October 21, an Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) variant built by HAL crashed in Arunachal Pradesh, claiming the lives of five personnel. HAL’s dodgy history with quality control and reliability have once again garnered the spotlight due to the incident. Eyebrows are also raised at the ambitious export aims of the Navratna Public Sector Undertaking.

What happened with the ALH? The chopper was a Weapons System Integrated (WSI) variant which took off from Likabali in Assam. At 10:43 AM on October 21, it crashed in the area of Migging, located the South of Tuting in Arunachal Pradesh. The crash came after personnel onboard the helicopter had issued a Mayday call.

A statement from a Tezpur-based spokesperson from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) suggests that the weather conditions were ideal for flying operations and thus cannot be blamed. Eyes are turned towards a different cause, though.

Technical failure Speculation around this is further strengthened by the fact that the Air Traffic Control (ATC) received a Mayday call. Technical failures such as this one seem to follow the suspicions in the broader pattern of military aviation crashes featuring HAL-designed and developed aircraft.

The pilots who lost their lives in the crash had over 600 combined flying hours on the particular ALH Dhruv variant. They also had over 1,800 service flying hours between them. The chopper featured in the crash was also fairly recently pressed into service- in 2015. Critics of HAL have long said that the helicopters indigenously designed and developed by the company often develop technical snags way before their shelf life.