Article Posted on : - Sep 04, 2011

Indian Navy's aerobatic team Sagar Pawan. A file photo

PANAJI (PTI): ‘Sagar Pawan’, the aerobatic demonstration team of the Indian Navy's aviation arm, will take a break from its displays for a few more months, senior officials said Saturday.

The break has been necessitated after the Kiran MK-II aircraft, used by the Goa-based team, was diverted to train fighter pilots being inducted in the Naval force.

In March 2010, an aircraft of Sagar Pawan crashed in Hyderabad while performing at an airshow, killing its pilot and co-pilot. Since then the team, based at the Indian Naval Air Station Hansa at Vasco, 40km from here, has not performed.

“They (Sagar Pawan) are still in the business. At the moment we are concentrating on the training part (of fighter pilots). They are not doing their active shows,” Commodore Ravneet Singh, Commanding Officer of INS Hansa, told PTI.

Singh said the aerial displays have been put on hold for a while as the Navy is inducting several fighter planes like MiG-29K and pilots have to be trained to fly on these new acquisitions.

Sagar Pawan, founded in 2003, is only the second naval aerobatic team in the world – the other being a group attached to the US Navy.