Indian aerobatics teams enjoy good safety record (Comment)

Much of the blame for the recent crash of the Indian Navy’s Kiran MK-II aircraft during an aerobatics display at the Hyderabad Air Show is being attributed to the plane’s age, but the reality on the ground lies elsewhere.

The fact remains that Indian aerobatics teams, Surya Kiran and Sagar Pawan of the air force and the navy respectively, have had no more than three crashes combined during the past five years — a record better than that of many other teams in the world.

Besides the crash in Hyderabad in which Commander S. K. Maurya and Lt. Commander Rahul Nair were killed, a Kiran MK-II aircraft of the Surya Kiran team had met with an accident Jan 21 last year, killing the pilot. Prior to this, another Surya Kiran aircraft had crashed March 18, 2006, during a training flight near Bidar in Karnataka, killing also the pilot and co-pilot.

Needless to say the Surya Kiran and Sagar Pawan aerobatics teams have had a much lower accident rate when compared with other aircraft in service with the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy.

In comparison, the Russian Knights aerobatics team has had four crashes, while the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels had had two during the same period, according to statistics collated from several order of battle websites.

In 2009, there were five crashes around the world during aerobatics displays. All the aircraft involved were over 10 years old.

In one case, at the Overberg Air show in South Africa, an English Electric Lightning fighter of 1964 vintage crashed after the pilot radioed complete hydraulic failure.

The Su-27 aircraft, a forerunner to the SU-30 fighter, had two crashes in that year, one flown by the Russian Knights aerobatics team at the Moscow Air Show and the other in service with the Belarus Air Force that crashed due to a bird hit in Poland.

The most unfortunate year for aerobatic plane crashes during the past 10 years was 2007 when there were as many as seven crashes, four of them in the U.S.

The famous Blue Angels team of the US Navy suffered a crash of the F/A-18 hornet that year when its pilot lost control and crashed the plane at the Marine Corps Air Station at Beaufort in South Carolina.

Questions have been raised as to why the Indian aerobatics team use nearly 30-year-old aircraft.

This is because aerobatics teams around the world use old and experienced aircraft — usually trainers as they are known to be forgiving in flight manoeuvres and easier to maintain than front-line fighter aircraft.

The Red Arrows of the Royal Air force flies the Hawk trainer planes made in the late 1970s. The Russian Knights team of the Russian Air Force flies Su-27 aircraft that are over 15 years old.

France’s Patrouille Acrobatique de France (French Acrobatic Patrol) flies the Apha Jet trainers made in the 1970s. Only the Roulettes of the Royal Australian Air Force fly a relative modern aircraft, the Pilatus PC-9 trainers acquired in 1989.

The U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels aerobatics team flies the F/A-18 multi-role aircraft inducted in 1986 and it is one of the few services in the world that uses combat aircraft for aerobatics.

Given the facts, it is only befitting to keep the morale of Indian aerobatics teams sky high rather than make some stray comments and take ill-informed decisions to bring it crashing down.

(14-03-2010- The author is a strategic affairs commentator and editor of Defenceworld.net. He can be reached at editor@defenseworld.net)