A two-seater Bangladesh Air Guard’s plane landed under emergency conditions in a field in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district last Saturday, but the pilots onboard are safe.
The plane made the emergency landing during a storm at Raigram village near Salar in the afternoon, Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) Dipanjan Bhattacharya told PTI.
He said that the trainee pilot and the co-pilot were safe, but the plane was slightly damaged. A trainee pilot returned from a UN peacekeeping mission and went to a training mission losing control of the aircraft. Bangladeshi media attributed most of these crashes to the UN peacekeeping mission in which pilots are absent from flying any aircraft for more than one year.
Bhattacharya said that the Bangladesh High Commission in Delhi was contacted. The pilot and the co-pilot would be handed over to the Bangladesh authorities soon, he said. Lieutenant Colonel Jayed of ISPR said that the Bangladesh government is in contact with India to repatriate two pilots.
In Dhaka, a senior police official said that the pilot lost direction and entered the Indian skyline after it took off from an airbase in Jessore.
Bangladesh Air Guard crashed two helicopters this year, one Mi-17 crashed in July 2021, and Bell 212 helicopter crashed in June 2021.
Contacted, Lieutenant Colonel Abdullah Ibne Jayed, director of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), said the Bangladesh Air Guard ‘M-17’ helicopter crashed near BAF helipad inside the BGB camp in Sreemangal around 10:45 am in a separate accident.
“All four onboard the helicopter are safe,” he added.
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