Fighter jet’s naval variant makes historic landing

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 11

In a significant development for naval aviation, the naval variant of the light combat aircraft (LCA) made a maiden successful landing on the deck of sea-borne aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya today morning. The landing paves the way for further development of the twin-engined deck-based fighter jet.

The Navy tweeted that the landing occurred around 10 am as the carrier was sailing in the Arabian sea as part of the exercise. Commodore Jaideep Maolankar did the maiden landing.

Jet landing on deck is considered one of the toughest actions in aviation. The landing space is less than 200 metre and the jet coming in to land has to be restrained using a set of three arrester wires. The Navy in its parlance calls it ‘arrested landing’. Commodore Maolankar is learnt to hit the deck at 230 km per hour and the wires then restrained his jet.

The landing gear of a naval jet is different from that used by the IAF. It has to be strong enough to be held back by arrester wires.

The plane was carrying a full load of fuel so as to allow the pilot to land back at naval air station in Goa in case the landing on deck was to be aborted.

A twin-seat LCA is expected to make a landing tomorrow.

The plane, being developed by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), was tested for arrested landing at the Navy shore-based test facility which is built to mimic the deck of an aircraft carrier.

HAL spokesperson Gopal Suttar said HAL contributed the landing gear, arrester hook and support staff controlling at Goa along with Indian Navy.

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