Recent Crash badly affects and Suspends Helicopter Service on Char Dham Yatra Route

Post the bad helicopter accident today morning, the DGCA (Directorate General Civil Aviation) reacted on Saturday by stopping the helicopter operations to places like Badrinath, Sahastradhara, Harsil and Kharsali Helipads in Uttarakhand from Sunday until future orders are issued.

Suspending the chopper operations to all four helipads is perceived as a sharp blow to the holy Char Dham Yatra as these fall in the pilgrimage road map.

In a letter sent to the Chief Secretary of Uttarakhand, the DGCA issued a statement that every operation to the helipads will be stopped from 11th June onwards till future orders are issued. This means that new passengers will not be airlifted to the helipads. The passengers who had been airlifted earlier to the helipads will be brought back at the end of 10th June. The Orders from the DGCA came shortly after a flight engineer and two pilots were killed and sustained a lot of injury when helicopters carried a lot of pilgrims crashed post the take-off from Badrinath shrine.

The letter sent to the chief secretary also stated that lack of sufficient infrastructure and basic operating processes had made helipads unsafe for the running such operations. The DGCA issued a statement in its letter to the chief secretary dated 17th May that a compliance report from the state Government duly rectified all observations at every observation by 31st May. However no communication hadn’t been received till now in this respect.

The Tourism Minister Mr Satpal Maharaj said that choppers flying to the helipads will be suspended and this will affect the Char Dham Yatra. There are sophisticated well off pilgrims who hail from many corners of the country and they are usually pressed for time. They keep opting for Heli services and it is them that the chopper strike will affect most badly thus causing an immediate drop in the numbers of pilgrims visiting Char Dham. The crash was termed as horrible as it claimed a life. The engineer was badly hit by moving rotor blades as he wasn’t wearing seat belts and desperately tried to save his own life by trying to jump out. Unfortunately he didn’t survive but the rest of the crew and all other pilgrims were safe.

The minister said that such incidents do send out negative messages. The erstwhile Indian Prime Minister Deve Gowda and his family were about to Badrinath shrine on Sunday but the program got cancelled as a repercussion to the incident. These mishaps send out an insecure aura and discourage all pilgrims and visitors. However Maharaj said that an official magisterial probe has been ordered into the crash In order to discover what exactly led to the bad accident.