NEW DELHI: The Indian Air Force (IAF) lost a MiG-29 frontline jet in a crash near Agra on Monday, taking the tally of accidents involving this type of aircraft in the country to 25. This is the second accident involving a MiG-29 to take place this year. Earlier, an aircraft was lost in September near Barmer in Rajasthan during a night sortie after its undercarriage failed to open.
A statement by the IAF attributed the cause of yesterday’s crash to a “system malfunction” and a video of the accident has emerged, which shows that the aircraft had gone into a “flat spin” while approaching the airfield. Pictures of the crash site indicate the aircraft to be the recently upgraded “UPG” variant.
In such a situation, the aircraft remains almost horizontal to the ground, but stalls due to loss of power and starts spinning. According to IAF pilots, the aircraft doesn’t respond to flight controls and it can be very difficult to recover from this condition. Flat spins can occur due to human error, technical problems in engines, hydraulics or controls, and environmental conditions like turbulence or wind shear.
Monday’s incident is the sixth crash suffered by the IAF so far this year. The earlier crashes involved a Hawk 132 trainer, Tejas, SU-30MKI and MiG-29 fighters and an Apache attack helicopter. The past three years have witnessed 24 crashes involving different types of aircraft and helicopters, with the number being 11 in 2021, five in 2022 and eight in 2023, according to available data.
Technical defect, human error and bird strike are the prime causes of aircraft accidents. Every accident or incident is investigated by a Court of Inquiry to determine the cause, fix responsibility, enable corrective action and modify operating procedures if so called for.
Since the MiG-29s began entering Indian service in 1986, there have been 25 known crashes and major incidents — including five involving the Navy’s “K” variant — claiming the lives of nine pilots. In other cases, pilots were able to bail out.
The first MiG-29 accident took place in June 1989, when an aircraft went off the runway and was damaged beyond repair. The IAF used MiG-29s extensively during the 1999 Kargil War to provide fighter escort for Mirage 2000s attacking high-altitude targets with laser-guided bombs as well as for carrying out combat air patrols. They were also deployed in Ladakh to counter Chinese aircraft during the face-off along the Line of Actual Control in 2020.
The IAF’s MiG-29 fleet went in for its first life extension programme in the mid-2000s, under which their technical life was extended from 25 years to 40 years to meet the IAF’s operational requirements. As the enhanced technical life of these aircraft will begin expiring from 2025 onwards and in view of the depleting squadron strength and slow rate of inductions, the IAF has drawn up plans for undertaking a second life extension project to keep them in service for a longer period.