MADHYA PRADESH: According to sources, the black box of Mirage 2000 and a part of the flight data recorder of the Sukhoi-30MKI jet which crashed in MPs Morena district has been recovered from the remains of the aircraft.
“The black box of the Mirage aircraft has been found from the wreckage in the Pahargarh area of Morena. A part of the Sukhoi aircraft’s black box has also been found and the remaining part of the recorder might have fallen in Bharatpur,” Morena Superintendent of Police Ashutosh Bagri said in a media briefing.
According to aviation experts, it was the first Mirage 2000 as well as Sukhoi-30 MKI that the IAF lost in a mid-air collision. However, there is no official statement on how the incident took place.
The two frontline combat aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) crashed during a training mission in Morena on Saturday, resulting in the death of a wing commander while two other pilots ejected safely.
Both the jets had taken off from the Gwalior Air Force station. The base has squadrons of both Sukhoi-30MKIs and the Mirage 2000 jets.
Meanwhile, the mortal remains of Wing Commander Hanumatha Rao Sarathi arrived in Belgaun this afternoon. His body would later be flown to his home in Ganeshpur by a special IAF plane. Sarathi was an instructor at Tactics and Air Combat Development Establishment (TAC-DE) in Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior. The 35-year-old pilot is survived by his wife, a three-year-old daughter, and a one-year-old son.