Aircraft vanishes over Bombay coast

A Fokker Friendship (F-27) cargo aircraft owned by the Elbee Airline courier service is believed to have crashed in the Arabian Sea off northwest Bombay early on Thursday morning, shortly after it took off for Bangalore from Santa Cruz airport.

The fate of the aircraft's commander H M Majumdar and first officer Paresh Balsar was not known even as Coast Guard and naval helicopters continued search operations.

The city police control room reported finding some wreckage, suspected to be of the ill-fated aircraft along the coast off The Retreat, a resort at Malwani in north-west Bombay. An airline spokesman said the company has sent a team to identify the wreckage.

The plane lost contact with air traffic control minutes after it took off at 0345 hours IST and disappeared from the radar screen, according to ATC sources.

Air traffic control said the weather was bad -- it was raining with low patches of clouds at that hour.

According to the airline spokesman, except for the flying crew - the commander and the co-pilot -- there was nobody else on board the aircraft. The plane was carrying four tonnes of courier packages and general cargo, the spokesman said.

The search operation was hindered by high tides in the morning. Some wreckage was noticed by the search team only in the evening when the fury of the sea abated.