New Delhi: A US probe has found that the pilot and co-pilot of the chopper that crashed in an Andhra Pradesh forest, killing chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy early this month, knew they were flying in a dangerously bad weather, an official said on Wednesday.
"The US FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) investigated the conversation between the pilot and co-pilot minutes before the chopper crashed. They also spoke of bad weather," said the senior official of the civil aviation ministry.
The Indian Government had sent the cockpit voice recorder and some samples of the wreckage of the twin-engine Bell-430 chopper to the US authority for investigation.
The chopper crashed on September 2 in the Nallamala forests, about 70 km east of Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh. The chief minister, two officials and the two pilots were killed in the crash.
Meanwhile, Indian authorities are also probing the accident.
The official said the Government was eager to come out with findings of the probe to send out a signal of India's preparedness to upgrade its aviation sector according to guidelines of the International Civil Aviation Organisation.
This was a critical condition laid down by US FAA. It had said if India failed to do so, the US would curtail flights from India and impose more stringent security checks.
Pawan Hans Corporation Chairman and Managing Director R K Tyagi, who heads a five-member high-powered committee of Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) probing the crash, said it would come out with its findings in three-four days.
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