When a ‘Packet’ with Dalai Lama onboard made an emergency landing in Leh

News Snapshot:

It was on October 23, 1972, that Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, survived an engine fire scare in the legendary C-119G Fairchild Packet aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) while flying from Punjab’s Pathankot to Thoise in Ladakh. The story of this eventful flight was recounted by Wing Commander N J D Conceicao, the former CO of Paratrooper Training School, Agra, at the recently held reunion of the Packets family in that city. “I received the Dalai Lama with the undersecretary of foreign affairs and invited him to the cockpit and took off for Thoise. At around 18,000...