IAF Fighter Jet Crash: Mirage Aircraft's Black Box Found, Part of Sukhoi Flight Data Recorder Recovered

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The pieces of the flight data recorder of Sukhoi-30MKI and the black box of Mirage plane that crashed in Madhya Pradesh's Morena area have been recovered, as per officials. During a training flight in Morena on Saturday, the Indian Air Force's (IAF's) two frontline combat aircraft crashed, killing the wing commander and safely ejecting the other two pilots.

Defence experts have said it is probable that the Russian-designed Sukhoi-30MKI jet and the French Mirage-2000 had a mid-air collision, but there was no official comment on it from the IAF.

Morena Collector Ankit Asthana on Saturday said both aircraft's debris fell in the district's Pahargarh area. Some debris also fell in Rajasthan's Bharatpur, which borders Madhya Pradesh, he had said. A black box, or the flight data recorder, is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft that helps investigate flight accidents.

"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 told PTI over the phone.

"The IAF, police, and other departments are searching for the remaining part of the Sukhoi aircraft recorder," he said. A high-level probe has been ordered into the accident, officials earlier said.

While the Mirage aircraft's pilot, identified as Wing Commander Hanumanth Rao Sarathi, died in the accident, the two pilots of the Sukhoi aircraft managed to eject and were taken to a military hospital, they had said.

According to an aviation expert, it was the first Mirage 2000 as well as Sukhoi-30MKI that the IAF lost in a mid-air collision. The SU-30MKI is a twin-seater combat jet, while the Mirage 2000, manufactured by French aerospace major Dassault Aviation, is a single-seater aircraft. 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.

With PTI Inputs