Eight MiG-21 warplanes have crashed in three years: Government

NEW DELHI: Eight MiG-21 fighter aircraft have crashed during a three-year period till August, government said on Wednesday.

"A MiG-21 fighter aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) recently crashed at Nal airfield, Rajasthan on August 2, 2011, in which the pilot was killed. No civilian was killed or injured in the accident," Defence Minister A K Antony told the Rajya Sabha in reply to a question.

In 2009-10, IAF lost four MiG-21 fighter aircraft while three of them crashed during 2010-11.

"Every IAF aircraft accident is thoroughly investigated by a Court of Inquiry (CoI) to ascertain the cause of accident and remedial measures are taken accordingly to check their recurrence in future," he said.

IAF has taken serious measures relating to invigoration of aviation safety organisation, streamlining of accident or incident reporting procedure, analytical studies and quality audits of the aircraft fleets to identify vulnerable areas and institute remedial measures to reduce aircraft accidents, Antony said.

An ornithology cell for bird surveys at the flying bases and bird prevention module has been established at the Directorate of Aerospace Safety and all flying bases were visited by senior aviation safety officials to apprise and caution the operating units on causes of crashes, he said.

He said that steps like increased use of simulators to practice procedures and emergency actions, including Operational Risk Management to enable safe mission launches and Aerospace Safety Capsules have been introduced in the training module of the air crew.