On July 22nd, 2016, an Indian Air Force Antonov An-32 transportation aircraft went missing over the Bay of Bengal. The last radar contact was at 0912L, about 280 kilometers east of Chennai. The aircraft was traveling from Tambaram Air Force Station to Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. There were 29 souls on board.

India launched the largest search and rescue operation for an airplane from July to September, with 16 ships, including a submarine, and six aircraft to the Bay of Bengal, about 150 nautical miles east of Chennai. However, the aircraft was never found, until today.

The following announcement comes from the Indian press Information Bureau:

“The National Institute of Ocean Technology which functions under the aegis of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, had recently deployed an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) with deep sea exploration capability at the last known location of the missing An-32.  This search was conducted at a depth of 3400 m using multiple payloads, including a multi-beam SONAR (Sound Navigation and Ranging), synthetic aperture SONAR and high resolution photography.  Analysis of search images had indicated the presence of debris of a crashed aircraft on the sea bed approximately, 140 nautical miles (approx. 310 Km) from the Chennai coast.

The search images were scrutinised and found to be conforming with an An-32 aircraft. This discovery at the probable crash site, with no other recorded history of any other missing aircraft report in the same area, points to the debris as possibly belonging to the crashed IAF An-32 (K-2743).”