CHENNAI: Did the three crew members of Indian Coast Guard’s Dornier aircraft have enough time to eject before crashing into the sea?
Discounting such a possibility, experts having experience in the sea maintain that the crew would not have had any time to escape from a plummeting aircraft. “It could have come like a stone with the crew hardly getting any time to get out of the aircraft,” said an expert.
According to him, it is likely the plane dropped into the sea from an altitude of 5,000 ft in just 12 seconds, like a stone. The water pressure is such that their muscles could not have withstood the impact and pressure, even bones would have disintegrated. It is likely that the skull could have sunk further down in the sea.
The crew on board did not have the G-suits (gravitational suits) which could have protected them from hurtling against such a gravitational speed. “Without it, it could even lead to haemorrhage,” explained the expert. Also, the transport plane doesn’t have the ejection seats like fighter aircraft.
Water pressure has also played a big role in hampering search by submarines at the sub-surface level as they have only limited ability in instances like this, although INS Sindhudhwaj played a key role in tracking the sonar transmissions.