Helicopter Crash in Uttarakhand’s Himalayas: Seven persons were killed when a Hindu pilgrimage chopper crashed in Uttarakhand, a state in northern India, on Sunday, according to officials.
Minutes after taking off, the helicopter crashed on what should have been a 10-minute flight from Kedarnath temple town to Guptkashi, a well-known Hindu pilgrimage location in the Himalayas, according to officials.
In a wooded location close to the Kedarnath pilgrimage path, a helicopter from the private service provider Aryan Aviation crashed at approximately 5:30 a.m. local time.
Poor weather conditions were thought to be the reason for the crash, according to officials.
According to officials, the pilot and pilgrims from the western states of Maharashtra and Gujarat as well as the nearby state of Uttar Pradesh were among the dead.
They claimed the victims were severely charred in a fire that broke out after the collision.
According to the Press Trust of India, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation was instructed to supervise all helicopter activities in the area after the Indian Civil Aviation Ministry suspended Aryan Aviation’s operations.
“The ministry also directed the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau to conduct an investigation,” the news agency reported.
Three days have passed since an Air India passenger plane crashed in Gujarat state, killing at least 270 people.
A Boeing 787 headed for London killed 241 people on board and at least 29 people on the ground when it crashed into a medical college dorm in a residential neighborhood of Ahmedabad, a city in northwest India, only minutes after takeoff on Thursday. Only one traveler made it out alive.
With one of the four holiest Hindu temple sites, Kedarnath welcomes tens of thousands of pilgrims annually during the summer, many of whom take advantage of helicopter services because of the challenging steep terrain.
Helicopter accidents are not unusual in the perilous Kedarnath region, where abrupt weather changes and high-altitude flying conditions can create difficulties.
Press Trust reports that Sunday’s helicopter crash was the seventh since the region’s pilgrimage started on April 30.
A technical issue forced a helicopter operating in the Kedarnath Valley to make an emergency landing on a roadway just after takeoff on June 7. The five passengers on board were uninjured, but the pilot was hurt.
The pilot was one of six people killed in a helicopter crash in Uttarkashi district on May 8. There was only one survivor.
