CHENNAI: The Coast Guard Dornier aircraft which went missing last month may have disintegrated after it fell into the sea, a top official said today.
"The Dornier aircraft may have disintegrated after it fell into the sea," Coast Guard Inspector General, (Region East), Satya Prakash Sharma told PTI.
"The water pressure at that depth in the ocean, about 990 meters, is very high and the aircraft would have disintegrated after it fell into the sea," he said.
To another question, he said the Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder would be handed over to the Board of Inquiry soon.
"They (Board) will make it available to Hindustan Aeronautics authorities (in Bengaluru) for decoding," he said.
Coast Guard constituted a Board of Inquiry recently to go into the issue. Headed by a Deputy Inspector General, a seasoned senior pilot, it has representatives from Hindustan Aeronauticals, which has the facility to decode the FDR and the manufacturer of the aircraft.
Meanwhile, in a press release, Coast Guard gave an inventory of the items belonging to the Dornier that had been recovered so far by Reliance vessel 'Olympic Canyon.'
The Flight Data Recorder, Cockpit Voice Recorder, two engines, propellers, tail and tail cone, airframe parts, maevest, single line replacement unit, parts of the fuselage and part of the landing gear were recovered from the sea bed by the vessel.
The items were recoverd from a depth of about 990 metres and 17 nautical miles south east of Cuddalore.
The Coast Guard aircraft went missing with three crew members somewhere around Chidambaram-Cuddalore coastline off Pichavaram mangrove forests on June 8 after a maritime surveillance sortie along coastal Tamil Nadu.
Multiple agencies, including Coast Guard, Navy, Coastal Security Group of State police, ISRO, NIOT were involved in the search for the missing Dornier.
Described by the Coast Guard as "one the biggest and longest search missions anywhere," FDR, Cockpit Voice Recorder were recovered on July 10 followed soon by the other items.