Two of the five men killed in this weekend’s IAF AN-32 crash near Jorhat, Assam weren’t supposed to be flying that aircraft at all. They were Agniveers — recruits on four-year contracts — strapped into a Soviet-designed transport older than their fathers.
The Indian Air Force Plane That Won’t Retire
The AN-32 entered Indian service in 1984. The fleet was meant to be phased out years ago. A replacement program was signed, debated, restructured, and quietly missed every deadline. The aircraft is still flying the same hill-strip resupply runs it flew through the Cold War.
This weekend’s crash adds to a fatal-accident history nobody in the Indian Air Force wants spoken aloud. One AN-32 vanished over the Bay of Bengal in 2016 with 29 personnel. Another disappeared into the Arunachal mountains in 2019 with 13 on board. Every Court of Inquiry cited weather, terrain, and ageing avionics. Every recommendation read the same: accelerate replacement.
Which brings us to the part of the story that isn’t about flying.
A Procurement Failure With a Body Count
India signed a deal for medium transport aircraft to replace the AN-32 fleet. The contract slipped. It was retendered. Then restructured for indigenous content. The replacement aircraft, on the timeline once promised, would have been on the Jorhat airbase ramp before the two Agniveers killed this weekend finished school.
The Defence Ministry has ordered a Court of Inquiry. It will examine the cockpit, the weather log, the maintenance record. It will not examine the procurement file. It never does.
Compare this with what India can move fast on. A fourth S-400 regiment arrived from Russia and the order was doubled within weeks. The GE-HAL F414 engine deal cleared in months. India signed a $629 million BrahMos export deal with Vietnam in weeks. Transport aircraft for the men who fly into the mountains? Forty-two years and still waiting.
Five families were handed folded flags this weekend. The aircraft that killed them will fly again on Monday. The replacement is still on a file somewhere in South Block.