India — Crashes of Fighter Planes and Helicopters

A total of 8 fight­er air­crafts and 4 heli­copters of the defence forces have crashed since 1st Jan­u­ary, 2011 (up to 2.12.2011). In these acci­dents, 9 pilots/service per­son­nel and 1 civil­ian were killed. The main caus­es of the fighter/helicopter acci­dents were human error and tech­ni­cal defects. 

Every aircraft/helicopter acci­dent is thor­ough­ly inves­ti­gat­ed by a Court of Inquiry (CoI) to ascer­tain the cause of acci­dent and reme­di­al mea­sures are tak­en accord­ing­ly to pre­vent their recur­rence in future. 

This infor­ma­tion was giv­en by Defence Min­is­ter Shri AK Antony in a writ­ten reply to Shri Kan­jib­hai Patel and Shri Natu­ji Hala­ji Thakor in Rajya Sab­ha today.