Defence News
MiG-29K jet mishap: Goa Naval Air Station operating without crash barrier since 2005
A Naval MiG-29KUB fighter jet which crashed at Dabolim Airport in Goa on Wednesday could have been saved if the airfield had an aircraft arrester barrier system, officials at the crash site told India Today.
The trainer variant of the MiG-29K fighter aircraft aborted takeoff during a routine training sortie and crashed at the end of the runway.
“During deceleration, the aircraft veered off the end of runway and caught fire. The pilot jettisoned the canopy and egressed the aircraft safely,” a defence spokesperson said in an official statement. The aircraft costing approximately Rs 400 crore is a complete write off, sources said.
The eastern end of the runway at Dabolim Airport had an aircraft arrester barrier system until 2005 when it was destroyed in an accident.
It has not been replaced since. An aircraft arrester barrier system comprises of elastic nets or barriers stretched across the ends of a runway and meant to absorb the forward momentum in a landing or aborted takeoff overrun by tactical military fighters.
A DRDO-developed system costing approximately Rs 1.25 crore can arrest a Su-30MKI fighter aircraft of over 20 tons, doing a speed of 300 km/ph.
A Naval spokesperson said that that crash barriers were not a mandatory requirement since the MiG-29K was a twin-engined high-performance aircraft and the runway length of 13,000 feet was deemed adequate from the safety point of view, in bringing the aircraft to a complete halt.
“Nevertheless, we are pursuing the case for arrester barriers for both INS Hansa and INS Dega, (the Naval Air Station in Visakhapatnam), ” the spokesperson said. He also added that the case for an indigenous aircraft arrester barrier system had been pending with the DRDO ‘for over a decade’.
On December 5, 2005, a Sea Harrier jet tore through the INS Hansa’s airfield’s arrester barrier, broke through the perimeter wall killing the pilot.
Sources say the barrier was not replaced after the accident even after the induction of the heavier MiG-29K jets in 2009, which at 18.5 tons is 7.5 tons heavier than the Sea Harrier which the Navy operated until 2016.
The Air Force variant of the MiG-29 has a braking parachutes that slows its descent speed, but this has been replaced in the Indian Navy’s MiG-29K with an arrester hook, a device used to stop the jet during aircraft carrier landings.
Air Marshal PS Ahluwalia, former C-in-C Western Command terms the lack of aircraft arrester barriers ‘against the primary norms of flight safety.’
“All IAF airbases flying fighters are mandatorily equipped with electrically operated arrester barriers, it’s one of the basics of flying fighters,” he said. This is the first crash of a MiG-29K, an aircraft inducted into the Navy in 2009.
The Navy operates 45 MiG-29Ks in two squadrons, including four trainer aircraft, first acquired as part of a 2004 contract signed with Russia for the aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya (ex-Gorshkov).
