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IAF grounds Sukhoi till ‘precautionary checks’ over | idrw.org
A frontline Sukhoi-30MKIcrashed near Pune on Tuesday afternoon soon after taking off from the Lohegaon airbase, forcing IAF to temporarily suspend flying of the countrys most potent and advanced fighters till precautionary checks are carried out. Fortunately, the two pilots Wing Commander G S Sohal and Flight Lieutenant U Nautiyal managed to eject safely before the air-superiority twin-engine fighter went down in an open field at around 1.10 pm.
The pilots ensured the crashing jet would not cause casualties on the ground, said Lohegaon airbase chief, Air Commodore V R Chaudhari.
Added another senior officer, The Sukhois have not been grounded But yes, they will undergo some systematic technical checks now before they take to the skies again. The multi-role fighters have had a great safety track-record.
The Sukhois are not the new MiG-21s, having recorded only three crashes in the last 13 years unlike the latter that go down with alarming regularity, the crash has heightened long-standing concerns about the poor servicing and the maintenance record of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL).
HAL is manufacturing under licence the bulk of the 272 Sukhois ordered from Russia in deals worth Rs 55,717 crore. IAF has inducted over 130 Sukhois, with a couple of squadrons even coming up in Tezpur and Chabua airbases in Assam in the last couple of years as a strategic deterrent against China.
Though IAF ordered a court of inquiry to ascertain the exact reason behind Tuesdays crash, what accentuated concerns is that preliminary reports held the mishap was due to technical problems, possibly due to the failure of fly-by-wire (FBW) control system.
There was no engine failure or `flame-out. It seems the pilots lost the controls of the fighter, leaving them with no option but to undertake planned ejection, said an officer.
The main reason behind one of the two earlier Sukhoi crashes in 2009 was attributed to the FBW system (the other was due to a fuel leak), which led to summoning of Russian engineers to probe the crash and the entire Sukhoi fleet being grounded for three weeks.
Later, it emerged that one of the pilots had accidentally switched off the FBW system, located behind him in the cockpit, while trying to change the radar mode from one frequency to another.
It was a combination of pilot error and a design flaw in the FBW system master-switch. Since then, all Sukhois have been modified to add a safety guard to prevent the accidental switching off of the FBW system, he said.
The suspicion is again on the FBW system now. If the technical defect is major in terms of system malfunction or design problem, Russian engineers might once again be called to assist HAL and IAF in probing the crash. IAF itself is keen to clear the air soon, with plans already underway to base Sukhoi squadrons in Halwara (Punjab) and Jodhpur (Rajasthan) for the western front.
As reported earlier by TOI, 39.5% of the over 1,000 crashes recorded by IAF since 1970 have been blamed on technical defects, with human error being the second major reason with 39%. Since 2008, over 30 fighters (16 of them MiG-21s) and 10 helicopters have crashed, killing 26 military personnel and six civilians.
A frontline Sukhoi-30MKIcrashed near Pune on Tuesday afternoon soon after taking off from the Lohegaon airbase, forcing IAF to temporarily suspend flying of the countrys most potent and advanced fighters till precautionary checks are carried out. Fortunately, the two pilots Wing Commander G S Sohal and Flight Lieutenant U Nautiyal managed to eject safely before the air-superiority twin-engine fighter went down in an open field at around 1.10 pm.
The pilots ensured the crashing jet would not cause casualties on the ground, said Lohegaon airbase chief, Air Commodore V R Chaudhari.
Added another senior officer, The Sukhois have not been grounded But yes, they will undergo some systematic technical checks now before they take to the skies again. The multi-role fighters have had a great safety track-record.
The Sukhois are not the new MiG-21s, having recorded only three crashes in the last 13 years unlike the latter that go down with alarming regularity, the crash has heightened long-standing concerns about the poor servicing and the maintenance record of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL).
HAL is manufacturing under licence the bulk of the 272 Sukhois ordered from Russia in deals worth Rs 55,717 crore. IAF has inducted over 130 Sukhois, with a couple of squadrons even coming up in Tezpur and Chabua airbases in Assam in the last couple of years as a strategic deterrent against China.
Though IAF ordered a court of inquiry to ascertain the exact reason behind Tuesdays crash, what accentuated concerns is that preliminary reports held the mishap was due to technical problems, possibly due to the failure of fly-by-wire (FBW) control system.
There was no engine failure or `flame-out. It seems the pilots lost the controls of the fighter, leaving them with no option but to undertake planned ejection, said an officer.
The main reason behind one of the two earlier Sukhoi crashes in 2009 was attributed to the FBW system (the other was due to a fuel leak), which led to summoning of Russian engineers to probe the crash and the entire Sukhoi fleet being grounded for three weeks.
Later, it emerged that one of the pilots had accidentally switched off the FBW system, located behind him in the cockpit, while trying to change the radar mode from one frequency to another.
It was a combination of pilot error and a design flaw in the FBW system master-switch. Since then, all Sukhois have been modified to add a safety guard to prevent the accidental switching off of the FBW system, he said.
The suspicion is again on the FBW system now. If the technical defect is major in terms of system malfunction or design problem, Russian engineers might once again be called to assist HAL and IAF in probing the crash. IAF itself is keen to clear the air soon, with plans already underway to base Sukhoi squadrons in Halwara (Punjab) and Jodhpur (Rajasthan) for the western front.
As reported earlier by TOI, 39.5% of the over 1,000 crashes recorded by IAF since 1970 have been blamed on technical defects, with human error being the second major reason with 39%. Since 2008, over 30 fighters (16 of them MiG-21s) and 10 helicopters have crashed, killing 26 military personnel and six civilians.
