The air force officers at TETTRA School at Bagdogra air base on Friday. Picture by Kundan Yolmo

Bagdogra, April 27: A technical school at the Bagdogra air base has trained 1,000 batches of helicopter pilots, reaching the landmark when 11 Indian Air Force (IAF) officers completed their course last week.

TETTRA School, which has been functioning for the past 10 years, imparts various levels of knowledge to air force pilots from across the country through 91 courses. The pilots are taught various aspects of the MI series of choppers in courses ranging from 15 days to six months. TETTRA stands for Technical Type Training School.

“The training is on various aspects of MI-8, MI-17 and MI-17 1V helicopters, which form a major chunk of the IAF’s chopper force,” said Wing Commander M.I. Ali, the commanding officer of the school. He added that MI-17 1V, inducted in 2001, is considered the workhorse of the force.

In the presentation that preceded the valedictory function of the 1,000th batch on Friday, one could get an idea of the multifarious role the MI-17 1V plays. Be it in rescue operations in flood-ravaged Bihar, delivery of goods in remote areas of Arunachal Pradesh or assault operations during the Kargil war, the chopper has proved indispensable to the force and the nation.

The 11 officers who completed the course, comprised three wing commanders, two squadron leaders, five flight lieutenants and one non-commissioned officer. Squadron Leader B. Chauhan was adjudged “best in the course”.

The participants learnt various technical matters of the MI copters, named after its Russian maker Mikhailovitch. “We studied aspects like the power supply to engine, rotor dynamics and how the blackbox and the cockpit recorder function,” said Chauhan.

Besides the commanding officer, the school has five instructors to train pilots. Some unique training facilities such as helicopter system simulator, see-through models of choppers’ critical systems and a helicopter shell created from damaged parts are in the institution. Air force officers from countries like Laos, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have also completed courses in the school.

After distributing certificates to the graduates, Air Commodore A.K. Jain, the air officer commanding, Bagdogra Air Force Station, asked the officers to apply the knowledge they had gained from the school for effectively carrying out missions during natural disasters and low-intensity conflicts.