New Delhi: An Indian Army Cheetah helicopter crashed Friday in Baraum in Jammu Kashmir’s Gurez sector.
Search parties have left for the snowy area to rescue the chopper crew.
News agency PTI said the accident spot was near the Line of Control with Pakistan in Kashmir’s Bandipore district. The chopper was on its way to pick up Border Security personnel who were unwell.
Rescue teams have left on foot while air reconnaissance teams were looking for survivors, officials told PTI.
The Cheetah is a single-engine helicopter which does not have key features like moving map display, ground proximity warning system and weather radar. It also lacks an autopilot system, which can be disastrous in case a pilot is disoriented in bad weather.
The Army has a fleet of 200 Cheetah helicopters. Over the last few years, there have been more than 30 crashes, killing over 40 officers.
In a 2015 internal communication, the Army headquarters had said that Cheetah helicopters have virtually become “death traps”, The Week reported.
It said: “Almost 80 per cent of these helicopters have outlived their lifespan of 30 years; the rest will cross the 50-year mark in early 2022.”
Also read: CDS chopper crash was caused by weather change, leading to Controlled Flight Into Terrain: IAF