Helmets, ID card of pilot recovered from Army chopper crash site in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua

New Delhi: The fate of two Indian Army pilots, one a lieutenant colonel and another a captain, was not known after their Rudra helicopter crashed into the Ranjit Sagar Dam lake near Pathankot on Tuesday (August 3), even as search and rescue crews recovered the wreckage of the chopper along with some pilot gear, officials familiar with the development said.

The items recovered by search parties included chopper skids, fuel tanks, stabilizer, helmets and the identity card of one of the two pilots, said one of the officials cited above.

The Rudra helicopter, built at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), was carrying out a training sortie that involved low-level flying over the lake, said a second official.

The Rudra, being an army helicopter, didn’t have an emergency flotation gear (EFG) and the crew was unlikely to be wearing life preservers, said commander KP Sanjeev Kumar (retd), a military aviation expert and former experimental test pilot.

"If the helicopter is operating within gliding distance of shore/land, life preservers, EFG and life raft are not mandated. Occasionally, such helicopters may be required to operate over water. That's 'risk exposure', he said.