Five chopper crashes in just 39 days occured in 2025 in Uttarakhand but no lessons learnt
SUNIL NEGI
Uttarakhand’s Char Dham chopper service has once again turned deadly, with six people killed in the latest crash on 30th October near Joshimath, underscoring why helicopter accidents have become a recurring feature in the state during the Yatra season.
The helicopter operated by Trans Bharat Aviation Pvt Ltd, call sign VT-HCX, took off from Badrinath at 1.14 pm for Sahastradhara in Dehradun carrying five pilgrims from Bengaluru – Arun Salunke, H S Natraja, Prathapa, Shankar Gowda and Sudheer K – and pilot Captain Himanshu from Delhi. It lost contact within two minutes near Hathi Parvat in the Joshimath valley amid snowfall and inclement weather despite an IMD orange alert for Chamoli for thunderstorm and 40-50 kmph gusts that day, and crashed into a forested hillside above Chai village. All six were killed and bodies were recovered by Army, SDRF and Chamoli police. UCADA said two sorties before and after the ill-fated flight had landed safely and ordered grounding of the entire Trans Bharat fleet.
This is not an isolated case. Huge rush for tickets for Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri during Char Dham Yatra puts private operators under commercial pressure to fly even in bad weather, with allegations of corruption and black-marketing of tickets every season. The reasons for repeated crashes have remained the same for 26 years – adverse climate with sudden cloud descent and loss of visual reference in narrow valleys, downdrafts and icing, negligence by companies in maintenance and overloading, flying in unsuitable weather, tail rotor strikes on sloping helipads, and lack of terrain-specific mountain flying training for pilots.
Data shows the scale of the problem. Between 2020 and 2025, India reported 12 helicopter crashes, seven of them in Uttarakhand accounting for 21 of 30 deaths, as informed by the Civil Aviation Ministry in Parliament in July 2025. The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau has recorded nine occurrences including eight accidents and one serious incident in the Char Dham sector alone between 2015 and 2025, with at least one accident every year since 2022, five of them fatal. Since the 2013 Kedarnath disaster when 24 people died including 20 personnel of an IAF Mi-17 rescue chopper on 25th June, two in a private crash on 21st June and two more on 24th July, over 43 deaths have occurred in Char Dham helicopter flights and over 60 if IAF and state accidents are counted. Major fatal crashes include Kestrel Aviation Agusta VT-NRK at Badrinath on 10th June 2017 killing one engineer, Aryan Aviation Bell 407 VT-RPN at Garudchatti on 18th October 2022 killing seven, UCADA finance controller Amit Saini killed by a tail rotor at Kedarnath on 23rd April 2023, Aero Trans Bell 407 VT-OXF crashing into a gorge near Gangnani on 8th May 2025 after hitting a fibre-optic cable killing six, and Aryan Aviation Bell 407 VT-BKA at Gaurikund near Kedarnath on 15th June 2025 killing seven including five pilgrims and an infant due to extensive cloud cover.
Following the cluster of five crashes in 39 days in 2025, the Union Civil Aviation Ministry had suspended all Kedarnath services on 15th and 16th June, suspended Aryan Aviation operations and suspended licences of two Trans Bharat pilots for six months for flying in unsuitable weather, and asked DGCA to enforce stricter protocols. DGCA inspected six operators and seven helipads for Kedarnath and 12 operators and 10 helipads for Char Dham before granting permission, and UCADA issued revised guidelines in July 2025 mandating minimum 1500 hours hill flying experience for pilots, mandatory take-off reporting and power to UCADA to suspend operations, along with control rooms at Sahastradhara and Sitapur for real-time go or no-go decisions. In August 2025 the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport headed by Sanjay Kumar Jha in its 380th report called the division of responsibility between DGCA as licensing authority and UCADA as slot manager an inherently unsafe arrangement with a responsibility vacuum and noted that India still has no mandatory terrain-specific mountain flying certification. After the 30th October 2026 crash, UCADA and DGCA in a high-level meeting on 31st October decided to make co-pilot mandatory for all Char Dham charters and mandatory pilot debrief report after every flight, while AAIB has started a detailed probe. Officials admit that after a few months of strictness, things return to square one once the Yatra rush returns, and only a permanent ATC at Kedarnath, weather-linked automated no-fly enforcement and criminal liability for flying against orange alerts can prevent future tragedies.
