CHANDIGARH: A Mig-29 fighter aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) crashed in Rurkee Kalan village in Hoshiarpur district of Punjab on Friday due to a technical snag and burst into flames, officials said.
The pilot ejected safely and has been rescued, they said.
The aircraft had got airborne on a training mission from a base near Jalandhar and developed a technical snag after take-off. The pilot was unable to control the aircraft and ejected. He was later rescued by a helicopter,’’ an IAF statement said.
The crash took place around 10:40 am, according to Hoshiarpur Senior Superintendent of Police Gaurav Garg.
This Soviet-origin fighter MiG-29, which was commissioned in the IAF in the 1980s, is primarily an air defence and air superiority aircraft and had played a key role in the Kargil conflict of 1999. Punjab has one of the bases of the three squadrons of this fighter aircraft.
The IAF has recently upgraded these aircraft to enhance their combat potential and give them a multirole capability. It was equipped with state of the art avionics, an array of smart air to air and air to ground weapons, and are capable of in-flight refuelling which significantly increases its combat potential.