Singapore Air Force helps to find missing helicopter
Singapore Air Force helps to find missing helicopter
Nethy Dharma Somba, The Jakarta Post, Jayapura
The Singapore Air Force has sent a special team and an unmanned
aircraft to help Indonesia find a helicopter that went missing
near Jayapura, Papua, on Oct. 12, a senior Indonesian Air Force
officer says.
A 29-strong team from the Singapore Air Force began searching
for the missing Twin Pack helicopter on Friday with a
sophisticated device called Unmanned Air Vehicle, Jayapura Air
Base chief Col. Anang Murdianto said.
The team worked with the aircraft equipped with an infrared
video camera and operated from the control tower at the Sentani
Air Base near Jayapura. The drone can fly seven hours non-stop.
"The aircraft will screen everything seen on the ground. At
night the crew in Sentani air base will turn the infrared mode
on, so that all the events on the ground can still be covered,"
Anang said. The Singapore team would be in Jayapura for one week,
he said.
Parts of the Unmanned Air Vehicle were transported from
Singapore on a Hercules cargo aircraft on Friday and reassembled
in Jayapura.
"The aircraft is very small," said a local resident, Lala,
when she saw it flying.
The helicopter went missing on its way to Benawa hamlet some
150 kilometers southeast of Sentani town near Jayapura after
taking off from Sentani airforce base. On board were Capt.
Beceau, co pilot First Lt. Satrio Utomo, mechanics Sgt Maj.
Haryadi and Chief Sgt. Purnomo and a civilian passenger, Anis.
The Indonesian Air Force and local search and rescue earlier
called off a search for the aircraft last week.
The went missing three months after another Air Force
helicopter went down in the Jabung Hill area in Malang, East
Java, at the end of July. The Bronco OV-10 was totally destroyed
and both pilot and co-pilot died in the accident.
An aging fleet has often been blamed for the series of
military aviation accidents during the past few years.
However, Air Force spokesman Sagom Tamboen said earlier the
Twin Pack helicopter was in good condition when it set out on the
Oct. 12 flight.