Reasons For Frequent Indian Air Force Aircraft Crashes

You may have heard about the Indian air force aircraft crashes and in some, our skilled pilots also lose their lives. You might also have heard the term ‘flying coffin‘ used for Mig 21 aircraft. But have you ever wondered about the reason behind these crashes? Is it the machine fault, old squadrons or the human error? Lets us talk about this today.

So first of all, we all know that the Indian Air Force is one of the best airforces of the world. And no doubt, the pilots there are highly skilled and trained. This is because they are constantly under pressure to learn and perform over a period of 2 years until they go to their squadrons. And moreover there is also a separate board to check their accuracy, health and performance every year.

Factors behind the aircraft crashes of IAF

You must know that most of the pilots in the Mig 21 crashes were new pilots. New pilots go straight from propeller driven trainer aircraft, to high performance jets like the MiG-21. And also the MiG 21 have always been a tricky aircraft to fly. Firstly the basic trainers, then intermediate jet trainers and finally graduating to advanced jet trainers. Omitting any of these stages can be disastrous.

10 percent of the crashes are due to bird hits. Most of the IAF bases are near populated places also including the recent Bangalore HAL. This is the reason that IAF is placing bids for bird detection and monitoring radar systems to be installed at airports and air bases across India.

And lastly, one of the most important factor is the delay in induction of new fighter aircrafts like the HAL LCA Tejas (to know more, click here ). Due to this, IAF had to use the old MiG 21s without proper serviceability.

Crash rate

The crash rate gives the idea of the rate of crash in all the flights keeping in mind the age of the aircraft. Here is a rough aircraft crash data.

• Su 30 MKI : 1.05
• MiG 21 : 1.74
• Mirage 2000 : 0.4
• An – 32 : 0.4

So these were some of the reasons for the aircraft crashes in the IAF and I’m sure that you have never heard about the loss of civilian lives in such crashes because these are our greatest fighters.

JAI HIND