Ship begins profiling sea floor, Dornier plane search continues

CHENNAI: The search for the missing Coast Guard Dornier aircraft and its three member crew continued for the seventh consecutive day today with the involvement of multiple government agencies, even as an NIOT research vessel began work to profile sea-bed to zero in on the location of the disappeared plane.

"#ICGDornier Research vessel 'Sagarnidhi' has started sub-surface search and seabed profiling 4 ascertaining the position of missing aircraft," Spokesperson, Ministry of Defence, Sitanshu Kar tweeted.

"Sagar Nidhi" an NIOT research vessel arrived (at the area of search off Cuddalore-Karraikal coastline in Tamil Nadu) by 10 AM today," Coast Guard said in a statement.

It was diverted from a remote location off Bay of Bengal where it was engaged in fixing Tsunami buoys after a request from the Coast Guard, an NIOT official said.

"Feeble,sporadic signals received are being reconfirmed by probe equipment of National Institute of Oceanography (NIOT) (which) embarked onboard ICG Ship," the CG statement said.

Also, operations by submarine INS Sindhudhvaj continued for detection of acoustic signal from the Sonar Locator Beacon (SLB) of the missing aircraft, it said.

"Intense search for missing aircraft continues relentlessly by Coast Guard and Naval ships and aircraft."

A total of eight ships and aircraft of the ICG and Navy are continuing the search.

"A total of 136 hours have been flown so far by the ICG and Navy aircraft," the statement added.

The Coast Guard Dornier plane went missing on Jun 8 along Tamil Nadu's coastline during a routine maritime surveillance sortie.

The aircraft had taken off from here with three crew members on board.