The incidents raise a question on the aircrafts carrying thousands of passenger’s within and out side the country. In an estimate, the IAF has suffered over 350 accidents since 1990. Most of them involved MiGs. The explanation given is that this happens because 80 per cent of the IAF combat aircraft are from the MiG family, with MiG-21s alone constituting about 40 per cent that are over-aged or the spare parts imported from Ukraine are of inferior quality. Every crash not only depletes the nation’s defence assets but also demoralizes the country. Above all, the demise of a trained pilot is also an irreparable national loss.

The purchase process for the Advanced Jet Trainers (AJTs) from the British Aerospace Hawk was suspended. And in the absence of the AJTs, the IAF inventory of MiG-21s, which form the backbone of the country’s air defence, is getting depleted with every crash and every phase-out. There is no other replacement for the Mig-21 on the cards.

In order to bring down the number of crash, the government has implemented numerous remedial measures to bring down the accident rate. These include enhanced use of simulators, modification of training syllabus, ‘close supervision’ and strict action against the defaulters. But nothing yield fruitful. As a result after every major crash, the government appoints an inquiry commission which in a given span of time-period, submit its report. No concrete step is taken off to avoid future mis-happenings.

On the other side, in a constant rise of high number of air craft crashes, the Indian Air Force (IAF) came out with saying that the accident rate had in fact decreased over the years. It has asked for a review of old civil aviation rules that have led to major disasters. In his recent comments, the IAF’s Director-General of Flight Safety and Inspection, Air Marshal P.S. Ahluwalia stated that the Civil Aviation Rules are based on the Aircraft Act of 1934, which dates back to 1937 and need to be reviewed.

9. Oct 19, 1988: Thirty-five died in a Vayudoot Fokker Friendship plane crash near Guwahati.

17. Oct 1, 2002: Two Naval cargo aircraft collided in mid-air during a ceremonial flypast killing 17 people - 12 Navy personnel on board and three civilians on ground- near Dabholim airport, 35 kms from Goa. Nineteen people on the ground were also injured.

18. Nov 5, 2002: At least five people were killed after a Jaguar fighter of the IAF crashed into a residential area near an airbase in Haryana state.

19. April 4, 2003: Three women and a child on ground were among the five people killed while four persons were injured, three of them seriously injured, after a Mig-23 fighter of the Indian Air Force crashed in a residential area in Mullanpur Dakha near Ludhiana in Punjab while four died on the spot, one died in the hospital later.

20. April 7, 2003:  An IAF MiG-21 fighter jet crashed into a milk processing plant in Haryana area near Chandigarh, injuring at least three people.

21. August 11, 2003: Three people were killed and 24 went missing and were feared dead after a helicopter carrying employees of the Oil and Natural Gas Commission went down in the Arabian Sea.

With the global civil aviation sector showing signs of growth, the Indian government opened up the domestic skies and had given permission to the private operators to operate scheduled domestic flights. Along with, the government is also coming up with various steps to open further skies, both for domestic as well as for international operations. Private airlines are granted license to operate on some international routes too. In coming times, with high growth of traffic in airlines, it will become a serious congestion problem unless timely measures are taken to match the airport and ATC capacity.