Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft crashes in Madhya Pradesh; 2 pilots eject safely
The twin-seater Mirage 2000 crashed around 2.30 pm on Thursday near Sunari Chowki in Narwar Tehsil following a “system malfunction”
New Delhi / Bhopal: A Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft crashed near Shivpuri in Madhya Pradesh on Thursday following a “system malfunction”, the Indian Air Force (IAF) said.
Two pilots, who were on the fighter aircraft during a routine training sortie, ejected safely, according to a statement issued by the IAF.
“The twin-seater Mirage 2000 crashed around 2.30 pm on Thursday near Sunari Chowki in Narwar Tehsil. The plane crashed within a few minutes after it took off from Maharjpura airbase in Gwalior,” Gwalior inspector general (IG) of police Arvind Saxena said.
Saxena added that the pilots were taken to a hospital in an IAF chopper.
A probe into the accident involving the French-origin plane has been ordered.
The IAF operates around 50 Mirage 2000s, which is considered one of the most reliable fighter jets in service. Mirage 2000s were used in the pre-dawn airstrike on a Jaish terror camp in Pakistan’s Balakot on February 26, 2019. The strikes were India’s response to the Pulwama suicide car bomb attack in which 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were killed on February 14, in the same year.
Two years ago, the IAF lost two fighter planes—a Sukhoi-30 and a Mirage 2000—and a combat pilot in a mid-air collision in Madhya Pradesh.
In a report tabled in Lok Sabha last December, the Parliamentary standing committee on defence listed the reasons for 34 air crashes between 2017-2022. These included human error (aircrew), human error (servicing), technical defects, foreign object damage, and bird strikes.
