JEDDAH, 20 July — Saudi Arabia has helped Indian officials rescue the passengers of a Cessna plane that crashed in a remote Indian village, reported Al-Jazeerah newspaper yesterday.
Officials of the Saudi Civil Aviation Presidency said this was accomplished with the help of messages received at their highly advanced instruments at the King Abdul Aziz International Airport.
“We picked up SOS signals at the airport and could locate the signals that were emitting near Nasik about 300 km to the northeast of Bombay,” said Muhammad Al-Salimi, director general of air passages at the Civil Aviation Presidency.
“On learning that the messages were being transmitted from a Cessna plane which had crashed in an Indian village, we immediately alerted Indian officials about the matter so that they could launch a rescue operation.”
The Kingdom has been playing a lead role in rescue operations worldwide after it joined the Cospassarsat, the international search and rescue program, he said.
According to the latest statistics 340 rescue operations were made involving 60 planes, 216 ships and 64 individual cases since 1999 through this program, he added.
Until the beginning of 2000, 1,227 people were rescued through the program which operates with the help of satellites for global positioning systems.
