Senior Air Force officer to head inquiry panel in Mirage, Sukhoi-30 MKI crash

The two aircraft had taken off from the Gwalior air base on Saturday morning. Wing Commander Hanumanth Rao Sarathi, who was killed in the crash, was a directing staff at TACDE. The two Su-30 pilots, who were undergoing the course, had ejected safely from the aircraft before it crashed at Bharatpur.

Wreckage of a crashed aircraft found in Bharatpur district. (PTI)

While sources pointed towards the possibility of a mid-air collision between the two aircraft, there was no official confirmation of this.

The CoI will establish the exact reason by examining the flight data recorders recovered from the wreckage of both the aircraft and by speaking to all IAF personnel involved in the mission, among other details.

According to a PTI report, IAF teams inspected the forested area where the wreckage fell on Saturday. The flight data recorder of the Mirage 2000 has been recovered and a part of the Su-30’s flight data recorder has been found so far.

Officers said bad weather — a common reason for aircraft crashes — is unlikely to be among the reasons for the latest crash as such training missions are usually avoided in that case.

Both the Mirage 2000 and the Su-30 jets have had a good flight safety record. Since 2010, the Mirage 2000 has been involved in five crashes, including one in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhind district in October 2021. Around 10 Su-30s have crashed since 2010. Su-30 MKI is a heavier and bigger aircraft than Mirage 2000.

In 2017, the government told Parliament that various steps were being taken to prevent accidents. This includes preventive measures such as invigoration of Aviation Safety Organisation, streamlining of accident/incident reporting procedure, analytical studies and quality audits of aircraft fleets to identify vulnerable areas to avoid aircraft accidents.