Jharkhand Chief Minister Arjun Munda, his wife and four others on Wednesday suffered minor injuries after the helicopter in which they were travelling crash-landed after multiple attempts to land at the Birsa Munda airport here.
According to airport authorities, the copter fell from a height of 30 feet, landed upside down and suffered damage.
The party comprised the Chief Minister's wife Meera, a BJP MLA, Barkuanr Gagrai, two pilots and a security officer. All of them were taken to the Apollo Hospital here, but there were no critical injuries. The Chief Minister is in the intensive care unit; he fractured his arm and injured his ankle.
The Augusta AW109 helicopter had developed technical problems soon after taking off from here, and the pilot refrained from landing at the helipad at Kuchai in Sareikela-Kharsawan district, about 100 km from here, and turned back at 12.30 p.m. The Chief Minister was on his way to inaugurate a power sub-station at Kuchai. The weather was clear.
Following the accident, flight operations at the Ranchi airport were suspended.
Director General of Police G.S. Rath spoke to the media here and explained the circumstances of the crash-landing.
Both the pilots, Kumar Singh and G.P.S. Kaushik, and security officer Manoj Singh, suffered external injuries and fractures. The crew had alerted the Ranchi airport of the emergency and a crisis team was ready. A fire risk was averted.
Apollo Hospital Superintendent P.D. Sinha said: “All the six people are doing well. There are no serious injuries. Security Officer Manoj Singh is under observation in the ICU. Mr. Munda's condition is fine…We carried out magnetic resonance imaging tests on all the injured persons and the results are satisfactory.”
In New Delhi, the Director General of Civil Aviation ordered an inquiry.
Earlier this month, a helicopter in which Mr. Munda was flying had made an emergency landing in Jamshedpur's Sonari airport owing to bad weather.
Normally the helicopters are very safe to fly. But like every other modern machinery needs meticulous care. Nothing can be left to chance. Unlike fixed wing air crafts rotary flying machines as very highly dynamically loaded and can be unforgiving and demands extraordinary coordinated flying skills especially while landing and in unpredictable weather conditions. Critical phase of the flying is while landing when the pilot will be under enormous stress and unexpected weather conditions or even minor malfunctioning of the craft can be disastrous.
Some of the amusing points from this news report: 1. As the old Hindi saying goes "Shaitaan ki umar lambi hoti hai") Mr. Munda's escape proves it again :) 2. Ranchi has a big government hospital, which the govt. claims to be state of art hospital. It is amusing that the chief minister himself and his coterie preferred Appolo over RIMS (Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences). Being a native of Ranchi I very know that the only route from the Airport to Appollo hospital has RIMS midway... Despite large claims probably the people in power are well aware of the ground reality of the govt. hospitals in the state.
At this rate helicopters will be the only things that make our politicians quake in their boots!
The name and make is mentioned as " Agusta AW 109 helicopter" in the article itself. But does it mean that helicopters are not a safe mode of transportation?
What was the 'make' and 'type' of the helicopter? Sadly, news reports never bother about such details. It is a most thing one should consider before filing any crash report. And this is not the first time it has happened.
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