Who Says These Are ‘Flying Coffins’?

In the 1971 war, the mig-21s were regarded as surefire winners. By 2000, after last week’s crash in Delhi, it has been dubbed a "flying coffin". A term derogatory enough to raise hackles in the defence establishment. According to senior air force officers, the nation’s premier strike aircraft cannot be dismissed in this fashion. "It is regrettable that MIGs should be targeted in such a fashion," says the official IAF spokesperson.

While the popular perception is that the MIGs have to be scrapped and that the IAF should stop flying these fighters, the air force does not think so. Chief of air staff A.Y. Tipnis seemed to echo these sentiments in a recent interview. In his opinion, MIGs were "airworthy" and "fit to fly". According to him, prior to each flight every aircraft is thoroughly inspected before it’s given flight clearance.

The view from within the force is that far too many conclusions are being drawn by non-technical persons on what is very much a technical subject. Says Squadron Leader R.K. Dhingra: "The accident rate is never an absolute number. Have the operational hours increased? Different countries have different sortie hours, so how do we arrive at a mean? The age of an aircraft is no factor either. The point is whether the craft is fit to fly and passes the critical parameters. In the case of mig-21, it does."

Defence minister George Fernandes has been quick to defend the MIGs. Criticising the metaphor of "flying coffins" for the MIGs and all efforts to label the fighters as old and, therefore, in bad condition, Fernandes has pointed out that whenever an accident takes place, conclusions and criticisms are made freely without ascertaining facts.

Says the defence minister: "The MIGs were the largest in number in the IAF inventory and were the most-flown aircraft. Therefore, accidents of MIGs were more than any other type of aircraft." He adds that all old and unserviceable aircraft are phased out when their life is over.

But all these explanations may fall short of answering the key questionÑwhy do our MIGs crash so often?