Video Captures Final Moments of the Chopper Crash That Killed India’s Top Military Chief

A helicopter is seen flying through heavy fog above a hilly area, and then the camera pans to locals trekking nearby. Suddenly, a loud crash is heard in the background, startling the trekkers. “What happened? Did it crash?,” one of them asks. “Yes,” says another, referring to the helicopter. 

The video circulated widely on social media and also tweeted by the Indian news service ANI on Dec. 9, allegedly shows the final moments of the Mi-17V5 chopper that was carrying India’s Chief of Defense Staff General Bipin Rawat, his wife and 12 others when it crashed in the green hills of Tamil Nadu state on Wednesday, killing nearly everyone aboard, including the general and his wife.

The lone survivor of the crash, according to media reports, is Group Captain Varun Singh, who is being treated for severe burns and is in critical condition.

Sources told India TV that the black box, cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder have been recovered and seem to be in good condition. Experts are hopeful these will provide crucial data on the chain of events that led to the tragedy.

India Today spoke to a firefighter whose team was the first on the scene and who had to trek two kilometers to reach the crash site. “We found two people alive. One had 90 percent burn injuries; the other had 45 percent burn injuries,” said the firefighter Ramachandran.  

The defence minister in his official statement to the parliament on Thursday said that a high level inquiry has been ordered into the incident. 

The video captured by local trekkers, which seems to show the helicopter getting lost in a cloudy mist, is reviving conversations around spatial disorientation – a phenomenon where a pilot suddenly loses his sense of space and time.

Officials have not confirmed whether the crash was indeed a case of spatial disorientation, but the video has fueled such speculation. 

“When you are flying normally, you are aligned with the horizon,” retired Air Commodore Shailender Sood told VICE World News. “In the case of spatial disorientation, all your systems and senses do not coordinate with each other as they should, and you end up experiencing false sensation, to the point where you might feel like you’re descending even if the altimeter tells you that you’re not.”

It has nothing to do with the competence of a pilot or the make of a helicopter, Sood added. The Mi-17V5 on which Rawat was aboard is considered one of the “safest” and “most modern” military transport helicopters, according to experts. 

“Spatial disorientation is purely related to what the pilot is going through,” Sood explained. “It is not restricted to a particular helicopter model or a specific terrain. Bad weather can make it worse, but a pilot may experience this even on the sea, above the hills, or in the clear sky.” 

He explained how airforce pilots are taught a course in “unusual altitude training” to deal with such scenarios. “The most important step is for the pilot to acknowledge that they are indeed experiencing a case of spatial disorientation. In most cases, the systems are all intact and they will guide you. But eventually, even the most experienced pilot can experience this. It is largely psychological.” 

After it was last serviced, the ill-fated Russian-made Mi-17V5 helicopter had flown more than 26 hours without any problem, sources told the Indian Express. They added, “its history was clear, and there had been no technical failure” in its last few flights. 

“Wait for the detailed investigation, but the past record of the helicopter model shows it is impeccable and 100 percent reliable,” a retired Air Force officer told the Indian Express.

“It must have been a freak accident,” the retired officer said. “The most likely reason for the crash could be foggy weather, which reduced visibility.”

In January 2020, American basketball player Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna were among nine people who died in a helicopter crash. Officials have recently confirmed that it was a case of spatial disorientation. 

The Indian government bought 80 Mi-17V5 choppers in 2008 for $1.3 billion from Russian manufacturers. The final batch arrived in 2018. The Mi-17 helicopter, which first entered service in the 1970s and is in wide use by defence services around the world, has figured in a number of accidents over the years.

Last month, 14 people died when an Azerbaijani military Mi-17 chopper crashed during a training flight. In 2019, four Indonesian soldiers were killed in central Java in a training accident involving the aircraft. 

Over the last nine years, seven Russian-made Mi-series helicopters have crashed in India.

But Sood, the Air Force commodore, says spatial disorientation can strike even well-trained pilots flying well-made aircraft.

“It can happen to the best of us. Even though we are all trained under the unusual altitude module, you don’t know how and when you might experience it. But yes, whiteout conditions and bad weather certainly makes it worse.”

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