Helicopter accidents in Uttarakhand | The flight to see god

A crashing sound disturbs the tranquillity of the mountains in Gangnani town — situated over 6,000 feet above sea level — in Uttarakhand. It was the sound of a helicopter ferrying pilgrims shattering in the valley, leaving six dead. The accident, which took place on the morning of May 8, just eight days after the Char Dham Yatra began, made headlines.

Gangnani is known for its hot water springs and is the gateway to Gangotri in the Himalayas, where Hindu pilgrims worship at the temple there dedicated to the Goddess Ganga. The river originates about 20 km upstream from here at the Gaumukh glacier. Gangotri is the second pilgrimage spot of the Char Dham, or four religious spots for Hindus: Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath, and Badrinath.

On the same day that the chopper crashed, some 180 km from Gangnani, at Sahastradhara in Dehradun, Mala Patel, in her 70s, is eagerly waiting for her chopper to arrive from the Himalayan Heli Services tour operator. She had flown all the way from Florida in the U.S. to take the yatra, which runs for six months every year, from April or May to October or November.

“Those sitting in my chopper were in a dilemma about flying to the temples after the crash. But I was sure. My conviction grew stronger when I saw that the pilot was wearing a sandalwood tika on his forehead and held Rudraksha beads in his hands, just like Lord Shiva. For a moment, it felt as if the god himself had come to fly me to his abode in Kedarnath,” says Mala, a chartered accountant.

Known as the backbone of Uttarakhand’s economy, each year the Char Dham Yatra sees larger crowds than the previous year. This year, the footfall has been over 32 lakh in the first 50 days. Tragically, this year the pilgrimage has seen five chopper accidents in less than two months, with 13 lives lost.

The privately-owned companies offering Char Dham tours on choppers, which cost anything between ₹2 lakh and ₹2.5 lakh per person, say that the accidents meant many cancellations, but there were still enough to keep their businesses afloat. Helicopters are the quickest, most convenient way to get to the temples, all in the high Himalayas. Until about a decade ago, the journey by road and then the trek up to the gods took 10-12 days across the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand. With more and more people visiting, the queues lengthened, entailing a wait of 2-6 hours outside the temple, for the glimpse of god.

The Central government has announced a ropeway, which will take more people to the area.

Faith matters, so does time

Naman Garg, 36, who works in a Hyderabad-based tech company, had booked a Char Dham Yatra package in a chopper for his family at about ₹13 lakh. His wife, in-laws, and two other relatives accompanied Garg. It took them four days to complete the pilgrimage.

“I get limited leave every year, and I need to save some up for health emergencies and some for the children. For working people like me, chopper services work well, rather than all the time it takes to trek to the Char Dham,” Naman says. He feels the gods don’t force people to sweat to meet them. He has been saving money to take the yatra for months. “When Indians can spend so much on weddings, then why not on spiritual journeys which are equally important?” he adds.

The all-weather road, the construction of which began in 2016, has made the journey smoother, but the frequent landslides that occur in the hills due to the construction and the fact that the Himalayas are young mountains, has added to the woes of pilgrims. In peak yatra season, the road to Chamoli, Rudraprayag, and Uttarkashi, the three districts that house the four temples, remains packed day and night.

The services included in the Char Dham Yatra package in a chopper are an attraction for pilgrims, says Rajni Sarkar, 48, who has been living in Singapore since 1999 and took the yatra on her 25th wedding anniversary last season.

Sarkar, who claims she has been religious since childhood, was drawn further into the faith after she suffered a serious ailment over a decade ago. Since then, she has visited Vaishno Devi in Jammu and Kashmir on a chopper every year. She says she has been to almost all the major temples in India, and even came to take a dip in the Ganga during the Maha Kumbh that took place in January-February this year in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh.

Some Char Dham Yatra packages include hotels and a ‘VIP darshan’, where pilgrims can cut the queue and view the idol in a few minutes of landing. “The hotels they had booked were so comfortable. The VIP darshan, even the special abhishekam (purifying the idol) at Kedarnath, was soul-stirring,” says Sarkar, who in one day went to the temple eight times, twice on a VIP pass arranged by the operator. She feels choppers are a boon for elderly and ailing pilgrims.

Ajay Singh, 53, who took a 16-km trek to Kedarnath at an altitude of over 4,200 feet, didn’t get a second to glimpse the idol. He says the priests pushed him out of the sanctum sanctorum, which was crowded with devotees who had no VIP passes. “People have made this pilgrimage a joke. They cling to their VIP status even at god’s door. I see crowds clicking selfies at the temple and hardly anyone pauses to inhale the fresh air that the place offers,” says Singh.

The chopper business

Abhishek Ahluwalia, the director of Diamond Hospitalities, which has been offering chartered helicopter rides for 15 years now, says there are 15-16 aviation companies running 25-30 single-engine helicopters for the Char Dham Yatra.

He estimates they make about ₹400-₹500 crore collectively during the six-month season. This includes helicopter services, VIP passes, taxi services, and hotels.

Ahluwalia says the supply always falls short of the demand from customers, who are usually non-resident Indians, corporate employees, politicians and their kin, bureaucrats, influencers, Bollywood personalities, and industrialists.

“This year, we had planned for an extraordinary rush but the yatra remained a bit disturbed, first due to the India-Pakistan tension and then due to bad weather and crashes,” he adds.

The chopper companies use helipads constructed by the Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority (UCADA), formed by the Uttarakhand government in 2013. Companies pay the government for parking, landing, taking off, and hangar services, says Sonika, UCADA CEO.

Chopper services generally operate in the initial 40 days of the yatra and remain suspended for the rainy season, from July onwards. They again start in the last month of the yatra, when the weather is suitable for flying.

A senior official from the UCADA says the per-hour cost of running a helicopter in Uttarakhand is ₹1 lakh to ₹1.2 lakh. It takes 7-8 hours to complete the Char Dham circuit in a chopper.

“Choppers are expensive and accessible only to a few. To ensure that people who cannot afford the service but are unable to trek up, the government has started shuttle services. These fly from three spots: Phata, Sersi, and Guptkashi,” he says. Nine privately-owned companies run these shuttles, whose prices were kept between ₹6,000 and ₹8,000, he adds. This is almost the same as ponies and palanquins. Aryan Aviation and Kestrel Aviation have been suspended since the crashes.

Each shuttle is allowed to run for eight hours, and they collectively ferry over 2,000 pilgrims to the Kedarnath temple in a day. Apart from this, over 8,000 registered ponies and palanquins also run on the temple route, taking the total business of ferrying pilgrims to the hill to around ₹100 crore, Uttarakhand government data show. The government estimates the Char Dham economy is worth ₹7,500 crore.

Manoj Agarwal, 51, a solar panel supplier from Agra, booked the Kedarnath chopper shuttle for himself and his wife. He had tried to for many years, but had never been able to get seats.

“This year, when I saw an advertisement of IRCTC’s (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation) special Char Dham Yatra train, I booked. The train brought us from Agra to Rishikesh, from where a bus took us to Rudraprayag, and the helicopter shuttle took us to the Kedarnath temple. It was a divine experience,” he says. Then he pauses when he realises that the date of his return to Agra and a chopper crash that killed seven was the same: June 15.

The challenges in the valley

A veteran pilot employed in the shuttle service says flying on the Kedarnath route may be lucrative for companies, but is dangerous for pilots. He alleges that with no radar, air traffic control system, and real-time weather monitoring, it is risky.

“With weather changing every minute and unavailability of emergency landing spaces, flying a machine in Kedarnath is risking the lives of both the pilgrims and the pilot,” says another pilot, who was previously with the Indian Air Force.

After the June 15 crash, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), a regulatory body primarily responsible for safety, put out a press release that said the UCADA had been directed to hold a comprehensive review with all operators and pilots before any resumption of services.

It also said that the UCADA will establish a command-and-control room to monitor real-time operations. The Ministry of Civil Aviation has directed the DGCA to post officers from Airworthiness, Safety, and Operations to oversee all helicopter activity in the Kedarnath valley.

Atul Vikram, an advocate from Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh, who lost his 19-year-old daughter Tushi and mother-in-law Vinod Devi, 66, in the June 15 chopper crash, says the shuttle service provider didn’t follow the rule of only flying after sunrise and never in bad weather. “My father-in-law and son, who had gone along with them, but were travelling in a different helicopter, told me that they were running shuttles like tempos,” he says.

Manish Rawat, a resident of Sersi, the village in Kedarnath valley from where one of the helicopter services operates out of, calls the choppers “monsters destroying the flora and fauna of the abode of god”. He says in season, they are as common as birds in the sky. “They land and take off one after the other. They are disturbing meadows, glaciers, and animals. How are you a devotee if you are contributing to the destruction of god’s abode?” he says.

The National Green Tribunal, in 2017, had directed the Uttarakhand government to ensure that no helicopter flies below the altitude of 600 metres in the Kedarnath valley, to mitigate noise pollution and potential disturbance to wildlife. The rule is frequently violated by the heli companies, says Brijesh Sati, general secretary, Uttarakhand Char Dhaam Teerth Purohit Mahapanchayat, a group of Char Dham temple priests.

“Heli services were started as a pilot project for the elderly and ailing pilgrims. It has now become a way to generate money for the companies as well as for the government. These companies overload their machines,” alleges Sati, meaning they run choppers overtime.

Politics on the pilgrimage

When a reporter questioned the Bharatiya Janata Party’s national general secretary and Uttarakhand head, Dushyant Gautam, about party’s stand on the chopper crashes, he said, “Jo log mar bhi rahe hain, dukh tho hai hi unka, lekin aap chalaogey helicopter jisme na marey log (The people who are dying — we are sad, but you go run a helicopter service in which people don’t die).” The BJP is in power both at the Centre and in Uttarakhand.

The Uttarakhand Congress condemned Gautam’s “irresponsible” remarks and alleged that the accidents took place due to a callous administration and poor rules.

Suryakant Dhasmana, the vice president of the Uttarakhand Pradesh Congress Committee, asked the government to strictly implement the air traffic control rules in the State and take strict action against companies that play with the safety of passengers.

He also demanded timely safety audits of the machines. “Chopper accidents happen every year and the government suspends licences of pilots, sometimes debars the aviation firm, but no action is taken against its own officials,” Dhasmana says.

After the June 15 crash, the government filed an FIR against the aviation firm and cancelled the licence of two pilots for violating norms.

Chetan Sharma, from Delhi who works at a public sector undertaking, has made the pilgrimage to Kedarnath every year since 2019, sometimes trekking, sometimes taking a chopper. He feels it doesn’t matter how believers reach god. He cites the Air India crash in Ahmedabad that killed at least 270 people. “Life and death are ultimately in the hands of god,” he says.

(With inputs from Jagriti Chandra)

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Edited by Sunalini Mathew

Published - June 20, 2025 01:34 am IST