The AN-32 aircraft and its history of accidents

An Antonov (AN)-32 plane of Indian Air Force (IAF) on Friday went missing over Bay of Bengal on its way from Chennai to Port Blair. An-32 aircraft had suffered three technical snags earlier this month. The plane with 29 people on board is still missing.

The Air Force’s workhorse included six crew members, two of them pilots and one navigator. Besides, there were 11 personnel from the IAF including an officer, two from the Army, one from the Coast Guard and 9 from the navy which included some from its armament depot. But this will not be the first time for the AN-32 model to face such incident.

77 occurrences have mention in the Aviation Safety Network (ASN) list. The ASN website lists at least one similar incident every year since 1986. It was just in the year 1991, 2012 and 2013 that no causality occurred.

Aircraft operated by IAF have suffered 15 out of 77 accidents, with total causality number of over 50.

According to the website, on March 1999 the biggest life-threatening accidents happened in Delhi when an IAF Antonov plane crashed into a water tank in Pappankalan while approaching the runway of Indira Gandhi International Airport, killing 18 passengers and 4 crew members as well as 3 people on the ground, and left the aircraft "damaged beyond repair"

More than a decade later, seven IAF crew members and six Indian Army personnel on board were killed when another IAF AN-32 crashed in the mountains near Rinchi village in Arunachal Pradesh.

Other lethal accidents occurred near Boothgarh in Ludhiana in 1992, in the Ponmudi mountain range in 1990, near Jamnagar in 1986, and near Jammu, also in 1986, according to ASN data.