Article Posted on : - Aug 04, 2011

A Jaguar fighter aircraft. A fiel photo.

MAU (UP) (PTI): A Jaguar fighter aircraft on Thursday crashed in Dilahi Firozpur village in this district, killing its pilot and a girl working in a field, the second IAF plane to meet with an accident this week.

The single-seater plane of the IAF burst into flames soon after the crash, DIG, Azamgarh range, L.Ravikumar said.

The pilot and a girl working in a field were killed in the accident, he said.

The Jaguar, a deep penetration strike aircraft, had taken off from Gorakhpur airbase in UP, IAF sources said in Delhi.

On Tuesday, a MiG-21 fighter aircraft crashed while landing at Naal airfield in Rajasthan's Bikaner district, killing the pilot.

On February 4, a MiG-21 'Bison' fighter plane had crashed apparently due to an engine problem while on a routine sortie in Madhya Pradesh's Sheopur district but the pilot had ejected safely.

In 2010, a total of 10 IAF aircraft crashes took place including four MiG-27 and two MiG-21 planes.

Defence Minister A K Antony had said in Lok Sabha on Monday that 24 fighter aircraft accidents have taken place in the last three years, in which four service personnel and five civilians lost their lives.

Of these accidents, 23 per cent were due to human error, according to him.

IAF sources in Delhi later identified the pilot as Flight Lieutenant S Pandey.

Defence experts said significantly today's crash involved a Jaguar, which was a twin-engine aircraft unlike single- engined MiG-21s and MiG-27s.

They said one of the reasons for choosing Jaguars was that these warplanes had two engines, giving them a better chance of survivability in case one engine failed.

They said there could be many possible reasons for the crash of the aircraft, which have been there with the IAF for about 30 years.

There could be hydraulic failure as also structural problems and that all these angles needed to be explored as the planes had aged, they said.

According to eyewitnesses in Dilahi Firozpur village, the plane was seen loosing height and, at one point, it seemed that it would crash into a residential area but the pilot appeared to have somehow steered it away towards a field.

Before hitting the ground, the plane struck a tree, they said, adding that the body of the pilot was found in the debris.

Superintendent of Police Omkar Singh, who rushed to the site, said the debris of the illfated plane was scattered in a large area with a radius of about one kilometre.