Fighter jet crashes
ahmedabad — An MiG-29 fighter aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) crashed in a farm near its Jamnagar base in Gujarat on Friday.
The lone pilot, who was airborne on a routine flying training sortie before noon, ejected safely but IAF officers who immediately flew to the spot in two helicopters rushed him to the base hospital in Jamnagar, 280 km from here.
The Southern Western Area Command (SWAC) under whose jurisdiction Gujarat comes, has ordered a court of inquiry into the cause of the accident.
A MiG-29 of IAF’s Jamnagar base had also crashed on June 25 this year at Khambhalia taluka of Jamnagar district and another MiG-29 had crashed in the Gulf of Kutch in 2008 too.
The Jamnagar IAF station, an important, strategically located base near the Pakistan border for Dragon Squadron of Jaguars and First Supersonics of MiG29s, regularly carries out exercises with other wings of the Indian armed forces and also air forces of the other nations.
In 2009 and 2011, it had carried out successful air exercises with Royal Air Force of Oman.
The country’s military has been plagued by frequent fatal accidents due to obsolete hardware. More than half of the 872 MiG fighters India bought from Moscow since the early 1960s have crashed with the result that the MiGs have been dubbed as flying coffins.
India plans to spend about $100 billion over the next 10 years to upgrade largely Sovietera military equipment.