With the Chennai airport closed till December 6 following heavy rains and flood, the nearby naval air station at Arakonnam is likely to be turned into a makeshift airport.
In another feat, Lt Jamyang Tsewang, the first commissioned naval officer from Ladakh, also successfully graduated as a qualified helicopter pilot, according to the Indian Navy.
"The water level in the city has gone down considerably after initial days of flooding. Since Saturday evening all aerial rescue and relief operations have been called off. There are no further communications from either Tamil Nadu government or Centre to carry them out as the city is slowly returning to normalcy," a top IAF official told PTI on Sunday.
Lieutenant Commander Prerana Pravin Deosthalee will lead an all-male crew. She is currently the first lieutenant of INS Chennai, the missile destroyer that rescued a foreign merchant ship hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia last week.
Given the long distance from the closest land, the Indian Navy has deployed its state-of-the-art Boeing P-8I Poseidon long range maritime reconnaissance aircraft, which have the endurance to reach the location of the incident.
Battling choppy weather, power crisis, inundated streets and the odds, the students, with a few girls among them, survived through the tough times, keeping each other strong.
The Indian Navy has inducted two more Poseidon 8I maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare aircraft, in a boost to its surveillance capabilities in the Indian Ocean in the face of China's increasing forays into the region.
'The Andamans are strategic territory for India.' 'We need at least three full-length, 10,000-feet airfields here.'
The P-8I, which is widely acknowledged to be the world's most deadly LRMR-ASW aircraft, is a derivative of the Boeing 737-800 airliner, onto which a plethora of sensors and weaponry has been fitted.
Pride was writ large on the faces of naval staff at Arakkonam Base that is playing a stellar and critical role in carrying out the rescue and relief operations for people affected by the torrential rains in Chennai.
Terming the attempts by war veterans to burn medals as an insult to the nation and armed forces, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Friday said it was for protesting ex-service personnel to prove there was no political motive behind the OROP stir.
A photo of PM Modi posted on the PIB website was removed after questions were raised in social media about its authenticity.
After an aerial survey of the flood-hit areas, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday announced an immediate release of Rs 1,000 crore for relief and rehabilitation works in Tamil Nadu.
The army and air force have been deployed for rescuing stranded citizens after torrential rains have left residents marooned.
The National Disaster Response Force on Friday intensified its relief and rescue operations in the rain and flood-battered Chennai and its adjoining areas as it added 20 more teams for the job and rescued over 10,000 people till now.
Now the the job of searching out and destroying enemy submarines in the waters off India's coast will fall to the navy's new fleet of a dozen Boeing P-8I aircraft, reports Ajai Shukla.
A relatively dry spell in Chennai and its neighbourhood brought relief to the flood affected residents and rescue agencies, as hopes of water receding fast went up.
Rescue and relief operations continued in full swing in Chennai with over a hundred people taken to safety by teams of Army, IAF and NDRF, including a seven-month pregnant woman who was airlifted on Thursday from one of the worst-affected areas in the flooded city.
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