Training aircraft goes missing

Update 2: This cancelled Update 1. The Director of IGRUA, Air Marshal (retd) VK Verma, confirmed that neither the aircraft nor any wreckage had been found and that search and rescue was still under way. Although the situation pointed to a bad outcome, we apologised for putting out the earlier update.

Update 1: Reports said VT-FGE had crashed and the student pilot had died.

What happened

A four year old Diamond DA40 CS with the registration VT-FGE went missing on a training flight today, 24 December 2013. It left Gondia at 07:09 UTC (12:29 IST) on a navigation cross country to Panchmarhi and back, and was due back at Gondia at 09:16 UTC (14:46 IST).

The last known position was 63 NM on radial 359 from Nagpur Radar, at 07:45 UTC (13:15 IST). That put the aircraft on the Gondia to Panchmarhi route with no sign of a deviation, over the village of Raja Khoh in Chhindwara, Madhya Pradesh, 80 NM from Gondia.

Gondia to Panchmarhi is 120 NM. It was the first long navigation cross country for the IGRUA cadet, whose name was withheld on request. The cadet had about 90 hours total time and was the only person on board.

Terrain around Panchmarhi

Panchmarhi is a hill station at an elevation of 3,600 ft, known for difficult terrain, turbulence and poor visibility. It had an unmarked mud runway oriented 04/22.

The search

Search and rescue had started but the aircraft had not been found. No ELT signal had been received. That pointed either to a soft, safe landing in an open field, or to an ELT that failed in a crash. We sincerely hoped it was the former. No call had come from the cadet's mobile phone, which he had with him, and no distress call was heard.

The aircraft's endurance was four hours. At the time of writing, it had departed 10 hours 15 minutes earlier.