"Sandy! Why aren't you in Goa?" That was my friend Lt Commander Rahul Nair just a fortnight ago, wondering why I wasn't there for a red letter day in naval aviation--the raising of the first MiG-29K squadron and the navy's return to carrier-borne fast jets.
I first met Rahul Nair nearly 25 years ago. 'Chukku' was the second of four children--a short nine-year old with a mop of thick black hair. He had a tropical temperament--an infectious grin that would light his face up and a stormy temper that would cut down boys twice his size--and a heart of pure gold. Our fathers were naval officers posted on ships in Mumbai and the families visited each other often. His father, Cdr RM Nair had just returned from a posting in Nigeria with what was El Dorado in the early 1980s-a VCR, color television and a library of VHS tapes. Chukku's home was our mini movie theatre- the first Star Trek movie, The Inglorious Bastards (the Italian-English original that inspired Tarantino) and an endless supply of dubbed Chinese kung-fu flicks. Then it was the cricket matches in and around Nofra as the naval officers residential area was called. In all the gully--cricket matches we played, my bat had the singular distinction of never touching the ball. Rahul, on the other hand, was the pinch-hitter. A ferocious all-rounder who never gave up. This was because he hated losing. I once watched him verbally attack the young umpire who had declared him out. But after the match, as we said, it was all cool.
We lost touch after the Nairs moved to New Delhi. Then, nearly a decade later, while I was working as a young city reporter in the Indian Express, Mumbai, I watched as two young officers with crew cuts smartly strode into Express Towers to meet me. It was Chukku. Only that a stint in the NDA and naval academy had turned him into Sub Lieutenant Rahul Nair. He was accompanied by Sub Lieutenant Saurabh Saxena. Both were naval officers united in a passion to fly jets. They were coursemates and from all accounts, inseparable. They joked about their NDA days--you can spot them somewhere in the cadet army that made up the backdrop for the Amitabh Bachchan-Ajay Devgan film Major Saab. The film was a terrible rip-off of An Officer and a Gentleman and Rahul fumed about having to sit in winter ceremonials for the mess scene in the middle of the Pune summer because the director felt it would look good. Rahul then moved on to train with the IAF to fly MiG-21s out of Chabua. In 2002, a crash of a twin-seat MiG-21 trainer kept us on tenterhooks. They never recovered the pilots of that unfortunate aircraft. "Sandy, I'm safe. But we lost two good pilots," that was Rahul calling back to say he was ok. Those lines would be repeated by his colleagues with tragic familiarity years later.
He relocated to Goa nearly five years back to fly with the newly raised Sagar Pawan aerobatics team and my visits to Goa were never complete without lunch or dinner with Lakshmi and Rahul. And three years back I saw his young son Rohaan, a spitting image of his father. Rahul took me around Indian Naval Air Squadron INAS 551, explained the workings of the Kiran Mark 2 trainer and his love for flying. We met and spoke frequently over the past five years, joked about the odds of two people having similarly named wives, mothers and fathers--Lakshmi, Saraswathy, Vijaykrishnan / Radhakrishnan.
But these were not exactly the best years for naval aviation. Some good pilots died in a spate of Sea Harrier crashes. Each time we spoke, the topic of the conversation inevitably veered around to that of crashes and the gloom over the squadron. Lt Cdr Pannu didn't make it but Cdr Vikram Menon miraculously survived a second crash. And then, in August last year, it was Lt Cdr Saurabh Saxena. Rahul was in tears. They called Saurabh's Harrier crash, Controlled Flying into Terrain or CFIT. A terse, sterile acronymn for a tragic horrible end. I had my doubts about continuing to fly ageing aircraft like the Harriers and Kirans, but for Rahul there was never any doubt. Flying was his passion, his hobby. He would continue to fly for as long as he could.
On Wednesday afternoon, I switched on to watch the TV channels breathlessly telecasting a Kiran Mk 2 spiraling out of control into a building. I froze. I dialed Rahul. His cellphone was switched off. Nobody could tell me the names of the pilots. My mother called in sobbing. Chukku was no more. He had died bailing out of the aircraft. He never gave up to the very end.
Source: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/87064/India/The+Lt+Commander+Rahul+Nair+I+knew.html
Showing posts with label kiran mkII. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kiran mkII. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
A pilot's moment of glory - by Flt Lt MP Anil Kumar
The Indian Air Force uses the Kiran aircraft, manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, for both basic and advanced flying training including weaponry. Kiran is a two-seat trainer. On solo sorties, the pilot tenants the left seat and the right seat is vacant.
October 29, 1984. Sarmat air-to-ground range, Jamnagar, Gujarat. 3.20 pm
Nirmal, flying solo in a Kiran, was turning left sharply to align with the practice target for the first pass of firing front guns. As he was more than halfway through the turn north, in a twinkle, he flew through a flock of cranes and heard several thuds of these critters smashing into the airframe.
One bird crashed into the windshield, splintered it, hit the starter panel, ricocheted into his face and smacked his head hard like a heavyweight boxer's uppercut. It stamped splotches of hotchpotch of meat, blood and plumage on his bone dome (helmet) visor. The unexpected blow, the temporary blinding, the flying smithereens and the piercing noise discomposed him. It made his hair stand on end.
Though he panicked, he reflexively got the wings level, raised the visor and coaxed the Kiran into a climb to gain height, with the intention of returning to base. He glanced at the engine instruments; the parameters were okay. After checking the wake for signs of smoke, he ruled out fire, and opened full throttle to power the climb. The flying controls were alright. Panic subsided.
The compass read 020. He quickly inspected the wings and the left air intake, and found a massive hole on the leading edge of the left wing. Out of the blue, he heard the sound every pilot dreads -- of the engine unwinding and going silent. The engine had quit -- a dire emergency. Despite the loud windblast, he could hear his palpitating heart. Every nerve and sinew turned taut.
For reasons of aerodynamics, you always take off and land into the wind. Runways are constructed depending on the prevailing winds in the place, and are specified in two digits after docking the last digit of its three-digit magnetic bearings. For example, if the lay of the runway is east-west, the orientation is 090-270, and the runway is addressed as 09 and 27.
Sarmat Range is situated west to northwest of Jamnagar airfield and along the Gulf of Kutch. At the time of the flame out, Nirmal was northwest and approximately six kilometres away from runway 06. With the engine thrust gone, height was of paramount importance, and therefore he continued the climb to convert extra speed into height. As the speed washed off rapidly and the aircraft approached the vertex of the climb, he smoothly manoeuvred the Kiran into a right descending turn onto heading 140, and flew at the gliding speed of 130 knots (240 kph).
Kiran has a small panel (starter panel) mounted atop the main instrument panel that contains circuit-breakers and switches to operate both the engine and armaments. During the descending turn, Nirmal was nonplussed to detect that the bird strike had flattened the starter panel to near horizontal position. He straightened the starter panel, flicked the armament switches to safe positions, reset all the engine switches and circuit-breakers except the guarded LP (low pressure) cock switch as he could not discern whether it had tripped or not.
As the compass needle advanced to 140, he made an assessment of his position. It was a bright day, the visibility was infinite and he could see the Jamnagar runway and beyond clearly. The altimeter read 2100 feet and he had under six kilometres to traverse to runway 06. Given the likely rate of descent, he reckoned force-landing was possible, but it would be touch-and-go because of the additional drag produced by the damaged airframe, the knocked-out windshield and the two front gun pods fixed to the underwing pylons. He mentally charted the flight path he would follow to join the final approach for landing. He commenced a left descending turn to follow the flight path he drew up. The nerves eased up.
He thought of an attempt to relight (restart) the engine, but scrapped the idea as he presumed bird ingestion was the cause of engine failure. The hydraulic pressure was okay, but with a dead engine, he had to utilise the residual hydraulic pressure judiciously. So he decided to use it to lower the undercarriage only, and would not down the flaps although a flapless final approach was exacting to execute. To stretch the glide, he would delay the lowering of undercarriage. He tightened all harness-straps, just in case he had to forsake force-landing and eject.
Though RT (radio telephony) was inaudible with heavy background noise due to the windblast, he changed over to Jamnagar ATC (Air Traffic Control) frequency, and screamed, "Mayday, mayday, mayday..." and announced his intention to force land on runway 06. He had a quick glance at the Air Speed Indicator; the speed had dropped below 130 knots (because of extra drag). He lowered the nose some more to increase speed to 130 knots, but he would have to tighten the glide to make up for the loss of height. "Can I make it?" he reassessed the situation. "Yes, just about, but I have to be on the ball and fly by the seat of my pants," he braced himself. He continued the descent, on a wing and a prayer.
As he neared the finals, he raised the nose a bit to reduce speed gradually to 105 knots -- the speed for flapless approach. Speed 105 knots. Glide -- perfect. As he patted himself, to his mortal horror, he found an aircraft lining up for take-off. "He's going to balk my landing," he cringed. His heart pounded in his mouth again. He hollered on RT telling him to clear off. To no avail. He bellowed again, which sounded more like a full-throated plea. Even Providence must have heard it, for, the offending aircraft vamoosed into a nearby pen.
He regained his breath and heartbeat, and stole a glimpse of the hydraulic pressure gauge.
Popularly known as Fido, Flight Lieutenant Rajendra Singh was in a Kiran waiting to line up for take-off. He was one of Nirmal's flying instructors, and both were alumni of the Sainik School, Kazhakootam, Kerala [Images].
Fido had fixated his focus on Nirmal's struggle to force land, and was pleased when Nirmal adeptly intercepted the glide path for a flapless landing. But something was amiss. "Check undercart," he prompted on RT, and soon beheld the three wheels lowering but slower than normal. As Nirmal rounded off the Kiran over the runway threshold for touchdown, his (Fido's) chest swelled with pride. But what he saw deflated the pectoral swell and made him jump out of his skin.
The canopy of Nirmal's aircraft rocketed skywards followed in a trice by the ejection seat. In no time, the seat with Nirmal strapped to it reached the cusp of its trajectory and then tumbled down. The drogue chute opened and immediately stabilised the descent. Fido's heart skipped a beat. The Kiran has a Martin-Baker ejection seat and the minimum forward speed to eject at ground level is 90 knots. What if Nirmal had decelerated below 90 knots when he rounded off? But before the consequences of this doubt paralysed him, he was sighing at the sight of the main parachute fully deploying when Nirmal was only inches above the runway.
It was a whisker. He could almost hear the thwack of Nirmal's boots landing hard on the runway. Fido just witnessed a live ejection.
Pilot Officer O M Nirmal Kumar, with barely 200 hours of flying experience, nearly pulled off an improbable forced landing of a crippled jet. Jet pilots will vouch that to force-land a jet is the devil's own job, and Nirmal made a damned good fist of it.
To put things in perspective, the elapsed time between the bird hit and the ejection was mere 100 seconds. Yes, one minute and 40 seconds! The tumultuous final approach lasted just 11 seconds! Here's to Nirmal for that masterly effort 23 Octobers ago.
Aftermath
The parachute opened just in time to break his landing shock on the concrete runway, which left both his ankles badly sprained and swollen. He was hospitalised, and put on lumbar traction for few days. Poultice and hot fomentation shrunk the swellings. Fortunately, there were no other injuries, and he was back in the cockpit before long.
Autopsy
An engine failure could not be freakier. The aircraft suffered extensive airframe damage but no bird was sucked into the engine. Kiran uses a low-pressure (LP) cock to regulate fuel supply to the engine. Switching off LP leads to fuel starvation and the engine shuts down in few seconds. Though the LP switch in the starter panel has a guard, the bird collision on the starter panel was hard enough to trip the switch through the guard! This was what caused the engine failure!
But why did he eject, not land? In the cockpit, when the undercarriage (wheels) is down and locked, three green lamps illuminate (pilots refer to this as three greens), each lamp indicating the position of the three wheels. When you lower the undercarriage in the air, three red lamps light up to signal its unlocking and unsafe position, and onto three greens when they lock down fully.
Fido's reminder to lower undercart coincided with Nirmal checking the hydraulic pressure. He lowered the undercart and kept a hawk's eye on the indicator. It's three reds all the way until he flared out over the runway threshold for touchdown, and therefore unsure of the wheels locking down. There he had to make the life-and-death call: To do a hazardous belly landing with the undercarriage in an unsafe position or to save himself through a risky ground-level ejection. When confronted to make that proverbial split-second decision, he settled on aborting the landing and ejected.
Whenever an aircraft with iffy RT/undercarriage approaches to land, it's the job of the ATC to fire a green/red flare to signal thumbs up/down for landing. In Nirmal's case, for the ATC, it was too close to call to fire either flare!
The sting in the tail
Here's what might have happened. Mind you, Nirmal was essaying to land on runway 06, and given the time (3.22 pm), the bright sun glowing behind his back made it tough to confirm three greens in the 11-second nerve-wracking home stretch. Simply, it was one of those days.
The last word
As often happens in military aviation, the aircraft had the last word! The undercart had locked down. As if unimpressed by her last nanosecond abandonment, she touched down, rolled on along the centre line of the runway and swerved left close to the middle-marker, and halted on the runway shoulder, thereby ensuring that she did not block the runway!
Maybe one can interpret that as her way of winking and saying 'cheers' to her captain's exceptional endeavour to bring her back home.
Flt Lt M P Anil Kumar is a former MiG-21 pilot.
Source: http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/oct/31anil.htm
October 29, 1984. Sarmat air-to-ground range, Jamnagar, Gujarat. 3.20 pm
Nirmal, flying solo in a Kiran, was turning left sharply to align with the practice target for the first pass of firing front guns. As he was more than halfway through the turn north, in a twinkle, he flew through a flock of cranes and heard several thuds of these critters smashing into the airframe.
One bird crashed into the windshield, splintered it, hit the starter panel, ricocheted into his face and smacked his head hard like a heavyweight boxer's uppercut. It stamped splotches of hotchpotch of meat, blood and plumage on his bone dome (helmet) visor. The unexpected blow, the temporary blinding, the flying smithereens and the piercing noise discomposed him. It made his hair stand on end.
Though he panicked, he reflexively got the wings level, raised the visor and coaxed the Kiran into a climb to gain height, with the intention of returning to base. He glanced at the engine instruments; the parameters were okay. After checking the wake for signs of smoke, he ruled out fire, and opened full throttle to power the climb. The flying controls were alright. Panic subsided.
The compass read 020. He quickly inspected the wings and the left air intake, and found a massive hole on the leading edge of the left wing. Out of the blue, he heard the sound every pilot dreads -- of the engine unwinding and going silent. The engine had quit -- a dire emergency. Despite the loud windblast, he could hear his palpitating heart. Every nerve and sinew turned taut.
For reasons of aerodynamics, you always take off and land into the wind. Runways are constructed depending on the prevailing winds in the place, and are specified in two digits after docking the last digit of its three-digit magnetic bearings. For example, if the lay of the runway is east-west, the orientation is 090-270, and the runway is addressed as 09 and 27.
Sarmat Range is situated west to northwest of Jamnagar airfield and along the Gulf of Kutch. At the time of the flame out, Nirmal was northwest and approximately six kilometres away from runway 06. With the engine thrust gone, height was of paramount importance, and therefore he continued the climb to convert extra speed into height. As the speed washed off rapidly and the aircraft approached the vertex of the climb, he smoothly manoeuvred the Kiran into a right descending turn onto heading 140, and flew at the gliding speed of 130 knots (240 kph).
Kiran has a small panel (starter panel) mounted atop the main instrument panel that contains circuit-breakers and switches to operate both the engine and armaments. During the descending turn, Nirmal was nonplussed to detect that the bird strike had flattened the starter panel to near horizontal position. He straightened the starter panel, flicked the armament switches to safe positions, reset all the engine switches and circuit-breakers except the guarded LP (low pressure) cock switch as he could not discern whether it had tripped or not.
As the compass needle advanced to 140, he made an assessment of his position. It was a bright day, the visibility was infinite and he could see the Jamnagar runway and beyond clearly. The altimeter read 2100 feet and he had under six kilometres to traverse to runway 06. Given the likely rate of descent, he reckoned force-landing was possible, but it would be touch-and-go because of the additional drag produced by the damaged airframe, the knocked-out windshield and the two front gun pods fixed to the underwing pylons. He mentally charted the flight path he would follow to join the final approach for landing. He commenced a left descending turn to follow the flight path he drew up. The nerves eased up.
He thought of an attempt to relight (restart) the engine, but scrapped the idea as he presumed bird ingestion was the cause of engine failure. The hydraulic pressure was okay, but with a dead engine, he had to utilise the residual hydraulic pressure judiciously. So he decided to use it to lower the undercarriage only, and would not down the flaps although a flapless final approach was exacting to execute. To stretch the glide, he would delay the lowering of undercarriage. He tightened all harness-straps, just in case he had to forsake force-landing and eject.
Though RT (radio telephony) was inaudible with heavy background noise due to the windblast, he changed over to Jamnagar ATC (Air Traffic Control) frequency, and screamed, "Mayday, mayday, mayday..." and announced his intention to force land on runway 06. He had a quick glance at the Air Speed Indicator; the speed had dropped below 130 knots (because of extra drag). He lowered the nose some more to increase speed to 130 knots, but he would have to tighten the glide to make up for the loss of height. "Can I make it?" he reassessed the situation. "Yes, just about, but I have to be on the ball and fly by the seat of my pants," he braced himself. He continued the descent, on a wing and a prayer.
As he neared the finals, he raised the nose a bit to reduce speed gradually to 105 knots -- the speed for flapless approach. Speed 105 knots. Glide -- perfect. As he patted himself, to his mortal horror, he found an aircraft lining up for take-off. "He's going to balk my landing," he cringed. His heart pounded in his mouth again. He hollered on RT telling him to clear off. To no avail. He bellowed again, which sounded more like a full-throated plea. Even Providence must have heard it, for, the offending aircraft vamoosed into a nearby pen.
He regained his breath and heartbeat, and stole a glimpse of the hydraulic pressure gauge.
Popularly known as Fido, Flight Lieutenant Rajendra Singh was in a Kiran waiting to line up for take-off. He was one of Nirmal's flying instructors, and both were alumni of the Sainik School, Kazhakootam, Kerala [Images].
Fido had fixated his focus on Nirmal's struggle to force land, and was pleased when Nirmal adeptly intercepted the glide path for a flapless landing. But something was amiss. "Check undercart," he prompted on RT, and soon beheld the three wheels lowering but slower than normal. As Nirmal rounded off the Kiran over the runway threshold for touchdown, his (Fido's) chest swelled with pride. But what he saw deflated the pectoral swell and made him jump out of his skin.
The canopy of Nirmal's aircraft rocketed skywards followed in a trice by the ejection seat. In no time, the seat with Nirmal strapped to it reached the cusp of its trajectory and then tumbled down. The drogue chute opened and immediately stabilised the descent. Fido's heart skipped a beat. The Kiran has a Martin-Baker ejection seat and the minimum forward speed to eject at ground level is 90 knots. What if Nirmal had decelerated below 90 knots when he rounded off? But before the consequences of this doubt paralysed him, he was sighing at the sight of the main parachute fully deploying when Nirmal was only inches above the runway.
It was a whisker. He could almost hear the thwack of Nirmal's boots landing hard on the runway. Fido just witnessed a live ejection.
Pilot Officer O M Nirmal Kumar, with barely 200 hours of flying experience, nearly pulled off an improbable forced landing of a crippled jet. Jet pilots will vouch that to force-land a jet is the devil's own job, and Nirmal made a damned good fist of it.
To put things in perspective, the elapsed time between the bird hit and the ejection was mere 100 seconds. Yes, one minute and 40 seconds! The tumultuous final approach lasted just 11 seconds! Here's to Nirmal for that masterly effort 23 Octobers ago.
Aftermath
The parachute opened just in time to break his landing shock on the concrete runway, which left both his ankles badly sprained and swollen. He was hospitalised, and put on lumbar traction for few days. Poultice and hot fomentation shrunk the swellings. Fortunately, there were no other injuries, and he was back in the cockpit before long.
Autopsy
An engine failure could not be freakier. The aircraft suffered extensive airframe damage but no bird was sucked into the engine. Kiran uses a low-pressure (LP) cock to regulate fuel supply to the engine. Switching off LP leads to fuel starvation and the engine shuts down in few seconds. Though the LP switch in the starter panel has a guard, the bird collision on the starter panel was hard enough to trip the switch through the guard! This was what caused the engine failure!
But why did he eject, not land? In the cockpit, when the undercarriage (wheels) is down and locked, three green lamps illuminate (pilots refer to this as three greens), each lamp indicating the position of the three wheels. When you lower the undercarriage in the air, three red lamps light up to signal its unlocking and unsafe position, and onto three greens when they lock down fully.
Fido's reminder to lower undercart coincided with Nirmal checking the hydraulic pressure. He lowered the undercart and kept a hawk's eye on the indicator. It's three reds all the way until he flared out over the runway threshold for touchdown, and therefore unsure of the wheels locking down. There he had to make the life-and-death call: To do a hazardous belly landing with the undercarriage in an unsafe position or to save himself through a risky ground-level ejection. When confronted to make that proverbial split-second decision, he settled on aborting the landing and ejected.
Whenever an aircraft with iffy RT/undercarriage approaches to land, it's the job of the ATC to fire a green/red flare to signal thumbs up/down for landing. In Nirmal's case, for the ATC, it was too close to call to fire either flare!
The sting in the tail
Here's what might have happened. Mind you, Nirmal was essaying to land on runway 06, and given the time (3.22 pm), the bright sun glowing behind his back made it tough to confirm three greens in the 11-second nerve-wracking home stretch. Simply, it was one of those days.
The last word
As often happens in military aviation, the aircraft had the last word! The undercart had locked down. As if unimpressed by her last nanosecond abandonment, she touched down, rolled on along the centre line of the runway and swerved left close to the middle-marker, and halted on the runway shoulder, thereby ensuring that she did not block the runway!
Maybe one can interpret that as her way of winking and saying 'cheers' to her captain's exceptional endeavour to bring her back home.
Flt Lt M P Anil Kumar is a former MiG-21 pilot.
Source: http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/oct/31anil.htm
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Both pilots had over 1000 flying hours to their credit
PANAJI/NEW DELHI: Two experienced pilots of the Indian Navy, each with over 1,000 flying hours to their credit, were killed when the trainer aircraft belonging to INAS 551 at INS Hans, Goa, Sagar Pawan, crashed into a two-storeyed building during an air show on Wednesday at Hyderabad. The Navy has ordered an inquiry into the accident.
The two naval pilots, Cdr Suresh K Maurya (39) and his co-pilot Lt Cdr Rahul Nair (33), were performing in the aerobatics display when the aircraft crashed into a building. They were performing at the inaugural function of the India Aviation 2010 Air-show at Hyderabad. Posted at INS Hansa, Goa, the two flew fighter jets and were specialised pilots.
‘‘The team has performed extensively across the country at many locations since its inception in 2002 with many an accolade and has had an accident-free record to date,'' a navy spokesperson said.
‘‘Both pilots were experienced members of the Sagar Pawan Aerobatics Team (SPAT). SPAT consists of HAL-manufactured fighter trainer Kiran Mk II aircraft based at INS Hansa at Dabolim,'' the spokesperson added.
The aircraft, an Mk II frame number 708, crashed a couple of minutes before noon in the Bowenpally locality near the old Begumpet Airport in the heart of Hyderabad.
It appears Commander Maurya tried his best until the last minute to steer the aircraft out of the civilian area to minimise human casualty.His co-pilot, Lt Commander Rahul Nair, had ejected, but was short of the required altitude and failed to activate his parachute. The accident took place killing both when the Sagar Pawan team was in its final action called ‘downward bomb bust manoeuvre' which would have taken the four aircraft in different directions.
Cdr Maurya was from Sultanpur in UP and is survived by his wife, while Lt Cdr Nair was from Kerala and is survived by his wife and a three-year-old son. The family lives in Mayur Vihar in Delhi.
Both Nair and Maurya had checked into a hotel in Hyderabad for the airshow on February 27. ‘‘In the final dive, the pilots either overshot the ‘dive limit' and could not pull up fast enough or the engine failed, making it impossible for them to control the aircraft,'' said a Navy official.
A Navy spokesperson said the Kiran aircraft fleet has been grounded until the cause of accident is
known. ‘‘It's the standard practice after any accident,'' the official added.
The Sagar Pawan team has performed over 100 shows in the past five years with a record 10 years of accident-free flying. The first batch of Kiran Mk II was delivered to the Navy in 1986 and the aerobatic unit Sagar Pawan was constituted in 2003. Two previous aircrashes recorded for Kiran were in 1998 and 1999. The crash rate for Kiran is one in 10,000 hours of flying.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Both-pilots-had-over-1000-flying-hours-to-their-credit/articleshow/5639051.cms
R.I.P ... May God give strength to the families of these two bravehearts.
The two naval pilots, Cdr Suresh K Maurya (39) and his co-pilot Lt Cdr Rahul Nair (33), were performing in the aerobatics display when the aircraft crashed into a building. They were performing at the inaugural function of the India Aviation 2010 Air-show at Hyderabad. Posted at INS Hansa, Goa, the two flew fighter jets and were specialised pilots.
‘‘The team has performed extensively across the country at many locations since its inception in 2002 with many an accolade and has had an accident-free record to date,'' a navy spokesperson said.
‘‘Both pilots were experienced members of the Sagar Pawan Aerobatics Team (SPAT). SPAT consists of HAL-manufactured fighter trainer Kiran Mk II aircraft based at INS Hansa at Dabolim,'' the spokesperson added.
The aircraft, an Mk II frame number 708, crashed a couple of minutes before noon in the Bowenpally locality near the old Begumpet Airport in the heart of Hyderabad.
It appears Commander Maurya tried his best until the last minute to steer the aircraft out of the civilian area to minimise human casualty.His co-pilot, Lt Commander Rahul Nair, had ejected, but was short of the required altitude and failed to activate his parachute. The accident took place killing both when the Sagar Pawan team was in its final action called ‘downward bomb bust manoeuvre' which would have taken the four aircraft in different directions.
Cdr Suresh Maurya
Lt Cdr Rahul Nair
Both Nair and Maurya had checked into a hotel in Hyderabad for the airshow on February 27. ‘‘In the final dive, the pilots either overshot the ‘dive limit' and could not pull up fast enough or the engine failed, making it impossible for them to control the aircraft,'' said a Navy official.
A Navy spokesperson said the Kiran aircraft fleet has been grounded until the cause of accident is
known. ‘‘It's the standard practice after any accident,'' the official added.
The Sagar Pawan team has performed over 100 shows in the past five years with a record 10 years of accident-free flying. The first batch of Kiran Mk II was delivered to the Navy in 1986 and the aerobatic unit Sagar Pawan was constituted in 2003. Two previous aircrashes recorded for Kiran were in 1998 and 1999. The crash rate for Kiran is one in 10,000 hours of flying.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Both-pilots-had-over-1000-flying-hours-to-their-credit/articleshow/5639051.cms
R.I.P ... May God give strength to the families of these two bravehearts.
Press Release by Govt. of India for Sagar Pawan crash
During an aerobatic display by the Navy’s Sagar Pawan Aerobatic Team, a Kiran Mk II crashed in Hyderabad Goa . A Board of Inquiry is being ordered to investigate into the circumstances leading to the crash. The other three aircraft in the formation landed safely.
Source: Press Information Bureau, Govt of India
Source: Press Information Bureau, Govt of India
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