india

Updated: Feb 20, 2019 08:06 IST

Shortly after two Indian Air Force (IAF) jets collided mid-air while rehearsing on Tuesday for Aero India 2019, spectators present in the stands initially thought the pilots were performing a new manoeuvre after having displayed the “mirror pass” — a move made popular by the famous movie Top Gun.

Two Hawk advanced jet trainers of the nine-aircraft Surya Kiran Aerobatic Team crashed into each other near the Yelahanka airbase in Bengaluru while practising for the air show that begins Wednesday. While two IAF pilots managed to eject from the aircraft and were said to be safe, Wing Commander Sahil Gandhi was killed in the incident that comes weeks after a crash at the HAL airport killed both pilots.

Angad Singh, who works as a military affairs reporter, said the Surya Kiran team took off from Yelahanka around 11.05am and departed the airfield area to hold airborne until their display time. Then the Pacific Air Forces F-16 took off, displayed and landed, followed by the Russian Yakovlevs display team.

“The Surya Kirans started with a series of flypasts in different formations, before splitting up to do smaller maneuvers with fewer aircraft — opposing passes, synchro aerobatics, and the like. One of these maneuvers is the ‘mirror pass’, where one aircraft flies straight and levels from right to left, while a second aircraft flies inverted a few metres above it, creating a sort of mirror image in flight,” Singh said.

Singh said he turned to speak to a fellow journalist for a moment and when he turned his gaze back to the sky, he “noticed the aircraft had separated dramatically — one was on its back and had pitched up and left, and the other was descending rapidly, the two having clearly collided.”

Military affairs web portal StratPost’s editor Saurabh Joshi said the spectators thought the two jets were “conducting a new maneuver altogether — seeming to sway in the air like two pieces of paper blowing in the wind”.

“...Maybe a second later, we saw two parachutes in the sky and the aircraft disappeared from view . A fraction of a second later, there was a big explosion and a massive plume of smoke formed immediately some distance ahead of the runway,” Joshi said.

Singh said that while one aircraft disappeared from view behind the grandstand almost immediately, the other began descending gradually. “Just before this aircraft also disappeared from view..., I saw two flashes of light in the canopy, which I surmised were the ejection seats firing.” The aircraft then descended out of sight, and a second or so later, two orange-and-white parachutes opened up in the sky, he said.

Moments later, a thought struck the people present in the stands and they began checking the photographs of the two aircraft taken before the mid-air collision. “... I suddenly remembered that it was not uncommon for the team to fly new trainee pilots in the rear seat during displays — it prepares them for aerobatic flying and gives them a firsthand feel for the Surya Kiran display profile,” Singh said.

“We discovered that the lower aircraft in the formation did indeed have the rear seat occupied, and the inverted aircraft had been flown by a single pilot. A few photographers also had pictures of the two aircraft descending after their collision, although none had managed to capture the actual collision itself. These images revealed that the aircraft that descended rapidly behind the grandstand had its nose section sheared almost clean off in the collision.”

Joshi said that Singh and he were hoping that they had missed seeing the third ejection because of the hazy sky and because the entire incident took place within a few seconds. That, however, wasn’t the case. The pilot who was flying solo in the inverted aircraft, Wing Commander Gandhi, had failed to eject and was later declared dead.