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Two weeks after three people died in the Indian Air Force MiG-21 fighter aircraft’s Rajasthan crash, the IAF has decided not to resume their operations till the time they are completely checked and cleared.
Sources told CNN-News18 that the Indian Air Force is carrying out checks on the ageing Soviet-origin MiG-21 planes, and therefore have halted their operations for the time being.
“Once the checks are completed, the operation will be resumed,” sources said.
The MiG-21planes have been involved in over 400 accidents since they were inducted in the forces.
In 2012, former Defence Minister AK Antony had said in Parliament that more than half of the 872 MiG aircraft purchased from Russia had crashed, in which, more than 200 persons, including 171 pilots, 39 civilians and eight other services’ people had lost their lives.
The air force has three squadrons of MiG-21 Bison which are set to be phased out by 2025.
This comes as an investigation is ongoing in the May 8 crash in Rajasthan’s Hanumangarh where three civilians were killed and the pilot sustained injuries.
Experts believe that with no new fighter jets included in the Indian Air Force (IAF) for a long time, the entire weight is on MiG-21, which is also one of the reasons behind the accident.
The MiG-21s were heavily used by the IAF for a long period of time.
MiG-21 planes & Indian Air Force
MiG-21 was designed by the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau of the then Soviet Union and India’s longest-serving fighter plane.
It is a Soviet-era single-engine multirole fighter and ground attack aircraft and once formed the backbone of the IAF fleet.
India got its first MiG-21 in 1963 and to bolster the combat potential of the country, 874 variants of the supersonic fighters were inducted.
The MiG-21 Bison, an upgraded version of the MiG-21bis, was first inducted into service in 1976. According to several reports, the MiG-21 had completed its retirement period in the mid-1990s.
The aircraft has been the backbone for a long time and has been famous for thwarting Pakistan’s aerial attack on February 27, 2019.
