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Jakarta Post

No deaths reported in Army helicopter crash outside Bandung

Investigation begins into second Bell 412 accident this year.

Nur Janti (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Tue, May 30, 2023 Published on May. 29, 2023 Published on 2023-05-29T17:53:17+07:00

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A

n Army helicopter carrying five personnel on a training mission crashed on Sunday in a tea plantation in Ciwidey, on the outskirts of Bandung.

The Bell 412 helicopter was returning from a training session for the 300th Raider infantry battalion when it crashed in the Rancabali tea plantation at around 1:30 p.m. and burst into flames, according to the Army account.

All five personnel on board the aircraft survived the accident but suffered injuries. They were treated at the Dustira Hospital in Cimahi. No civilians were wounded in the incident.

Firefighters were deployed to the scene to put out the blaze.

The army is investigating the cause and the chronology of the incident.

“We have sent an investigation team there,” read an Army press statement released on Sunday. “The helicopter was operated by the Army Aviation Center during pre-deployment training to transport personnel and logistical equipment.”

It was the second accident this year involving a state-operated Bell 412 helicopter, a multipurpose utility helicopter manufactured by Bell Textron. The model was released in 1981 and is still in production today.

In February, a Bell 412SP-variant helicopter operated by the National Police crash-landed in the jungle of Jambi amid bad weather. All six passengers, including Jambi Police chief Insp. Gen. Rusdi Hartono and three crew members, survived the crash with injuries. They were stranded at the crash site for a day before being spotted by a search and rescue team.

But the terrain around the crash site was too difficult for members of the rescue team to reach the survivors immediately, so first aid supplies and food were airdropped to them in the interim.

The ensuing evacuation was performed one survivor at a time and involved the National Police, the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) and the Indonesian Military (TNI). Six helicopters were deployed for the mission, and Rusdi was the last to be rescued as his broken arm complicated the process.

The TNI’s Bell 412 helicopters were produced by Textron but several were customized by state-owned aircraft producer PT Dirgantara Indonesia (PTDI).

It remains unclear which Bell 412 variant crashed in Ciwidey.

In 2016, a Bell 412 belonging to the TNI crashed in bad weather in Poso, Central Sulawesi, killing all 13 officers and soldiers on board, including the then-commander of the Central Sulawesi Tadulako 132 Military Command.

In the same year, a helicopter of the same type operated by the Army and carrying five personnel disappeared in Malinau, North Kalimantan, while transporting 400 kilograms of supplies for a border security team.

Three of the passengers were found dead and one was found injured not long after a rescue team located the crash site. The pilot was found alive two weeks after the accident.

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