Jamnagar: A MiG-29 jet fighter of the Indian Air Force crashed in the Arabian Sea off Jamnagar coast during a training mission around noon on Monday but the pilot ejected safely.
Flight Lieutenant Dheer, was rescued after he bailed out of the aircraft which crashed at 11:53 hours, an IAF spokesman said in New Delhi.
The IAF's all-weather air superiority aircraft was on a one-on-one training sortie when the pilot lost control of the MiG-29 which crashed in the sea about 50 kilometre off Jamnagar,he said.
Naval divers from the INS Valsura base are being pressed into service to fish out the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder (black-box), the spokesman said.
The MiG-29 belonged to the IAF's 28 Squadron and it had taken off from Jamnagar for the training exercise.This is the sixth air crash being suffered by the IAF this year and the fifth MiG-29 to crash since June 2006.
The earlier five crashes involved a MiG-27, two MiG-21s, a Hawk Advanced Jet Trainer and a Kiran trainer this year. A pilot was killed in one of the crashes.
In January this year, a MiG-27 crashed near Hashimara in North Bengal, followed by a MiG-21 crash near Bhuj in Gujarat in February.
In April, a Hawk trainer crashed at Bidar, Karnataka and in May, a Kiran trainer crashed at Dindigul near Hyderabad killing a lady trainee pilot. In the fifth incident, also in May, a MiG-21 from Bagdogra air base crashed.
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