IAF has sent the blackbox of the ill-fated C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft to US as the box suffered damage after the plane crashed on Friday last near Gwalior.  IAF has sought the assistance of lockheed Martin, the manufacturer of the plane in decoding the data and enable the investigators to find out the cause of mishap which killed all five crew members aboard.

Giving this information here, officials said the black box was sent to US on Sunday morning after IAF experts detected that the connectors of the Flight Data Recorder or the black box are damaged along with the card inside the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR). “To avoid any loss of data while trying to decode the equipment, we have decided to send the black box to the US,” officials said.

The delay in decoding the black box data would mean a delay in determining the cause of the crash, he said adding the mandatory board of inquiry is now examining the debris of the plane which crashed into a hillock 115 km South-West of Gwalior after taking off from Agra.

Officials denied reports suggesting that the C-130J fleet was grounded following the mishap and said the aircraft did not fly on Saturday as the personnel of the squadron were busy in the last rites of the five victims of the crash.

India had inducted six C-130J Super Hercules aircraft, bought from the US, through the Foreign Military Sale route(FMS) at a cost of around Rs 5,780 crore four years ago. The home base of the 77 squadron ‘Veiled Vipers’ operating the aircraft is Hindon in Ghaziabad.

The versatile and rugged aircraft recently landed on the Daulat Beg Oldie air-field in ladakh near the China border and helped in boosting the IAF’s capability to airlift troops closer to the border during emergency. 

Given the capabilities of the plane to land at under prepared strips and take off with a short run besides flying in near zero visibility and carry more than 20 tonnes, the IAF had recently placed an order for additional C-130 Js. The delivery will start from next year onwards.