Thank God for mobile phones! A chopper from the fleet of Pawan Hans was returning from an offshore operation on Saturday morning when the radio-communication device stopped functioning. Juhu aerodrome officials said the Air Traffic Control (ATC) Juhu only came to know about the location of the helicopter once the pilot called the tower landline from his cellphone, requesting for an emergency landing procedure.

“The Pawan Hans chopper had to coordinate the entire landing procedure with the ATC through cellphone after it reported a snag with the onboard communication device. The chopper was returning from offshore operations at the time, but was at a long distance and height, where the mobile network was not functional. It covered up the space with more speed than usual and on nearing the aerodrome, reduced the height to get into network area so it could contact ATC for landing,” said a senior AAI official in Mumbai.