6 May : Treading cautiously following the first-ever Sukhoi crash since the warplane’s inception 12 years back, the Indian Air Force (IAF) has called for the assistance of Russian experts to carry out checks on the 60-aircraft fleet before taking them to the skies again.
IAF officials said in New Delhi on Wednesday that the requisition for the experts from the Russian Sukhoi Corporation, the original equipment manufacturers, was sent a couple of days ago, as the aircraft were still being manufactured in India under a contractual warranty from Russia.
But the scheduled arrival of the experts for carrying out the joint probe into the Su-30MKI crash and for conducting checks on the aircraft fleet was yet to be intimated to the IAF, they said.
"The fleet from the three Sukhoi squadrons have not flown for the past one week after the crash on April 30 in which the IAF lost a fighter pilot. But no official order for their grounding has been given," officials said.
Grounding, which is a technical order, is issued only after a flaw has been identified. In the case of the Sukhoi crash, the investigations began a week ago and the IAF has not yet figured out the reasons for the crash," officials said.
"Just because the aircraft is on the ground and has not flown does not mean, the fleet has been grounded. Whenever there is a need to carry out a sortie, the aircraft can be flown," said an official at the Air Headquarters.
The crash took place about 70 km from Jaisalmer in Rajasthan while flying in a four-aircraft formation back to Pune."The airframe and systems of the entire fleet will now undergo a thorough inspection, as there is suspicion that there could be structural problems in the aircraft that crashed," officials said.
The IAF has also almost ruled out the possibility of "pilot error" in the 30th April crash, but is awaiting a final word on that from the probe team.
Of the three Sukhoi squadrons that IAF operates, two are currently based in Pune and one in Bareilly.