MIG - 29 Crashes In Ambala

A MiG-29 of the Indian Air Force crashed into paddy fields near Ambala in Haryana on Thursday but the pilot ejected out to safety .

About a dozen persons were working on the fields when the jet crashed in the afternoon. None of them was injured. A tractor, however, was damaged.

In the past five years, similar crashes in Punjab, Haryana had killed 17 people on the ground.

The pilot, Squadron Leader V. Naik, has been admitted to the military hospital for mandatory checks.

The IAF has ordered a statutory probe into the incident.

This is the fifth fighter jet to crash this year. They are, two MiG-29s, a Kiran trainer and two MiG-21 variants.

The IAF lost eight fighter planes last year. Notwithstanding the latest crash, the IAF safety record shows that there has been a drastic improvement, after the Air Force came to grips with the problems affecting the MiG-21 fleet.

Despite the eight crashes last year, the IAF recorded an all-time low accident rate of 0.44 accidents per 10,000 hours of flying, against a high of 1.84 accidents in 1972-73.