Wrong to blame us for Mirage crash without inquiry: HAL

Ajay Banerjee
Tribune News Service
Bengaluru, February 21

The Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) on Thursday said it was wrong to blame them for the  Mirage 2000 crash (on February 1) without the Court of Inquiry (CoI) getting completed.

The crash had killed two pilots--Squadron Leaders Samir Abrol and Sidhharth Negi--who were attached to Aircraft and Systems Testing Establishment (ASTE). The two were on a test flight of the mirage upgraded by the HAL.

HAL Chairman and Managing Director R Madhavan was asked at a press conference at the Aero India here on the bad press his company was getting, especially after Union Minister Gen VK Singh (retd), a former chief of the Army, questioned the HAL’s capability saying “parts of the planes are falling on the runaway”.

Madhavan said, “We will not comment on that. However, we will wait for the CoI to be over. Let the report come out. The crash was not the way it was reported in the media and people have blamed the HAL without knowing the full facts.”

He said, “We do feel bad when people talk ill of us, but the morale has not dropped.”

The HAL team led by the CMD announced that it intended to have the first flight of the next version of the Tejas called the ‘Mark 1A’ in 2022. “The production can start in one year after the flight. We expect the order in one or two months,” he said.

On being asked about the production schedule of the Mark 1-A, the HAL team said, “By 2022 we would have graduated  to producing 24 planes a year, indicating that the 83 planes planned under the ‘Mark1A’ project would be done in three years.

The Mark1A would have 43 upgrades over and above the existing version called the initial operational clearance (IOC).

On Wednesday, the Tejas was given a final operational clearance (FOC) certification. The HAL is listed to make 123 Tejas; of these 20 are called the initial operational clearance (IOC) version and another 20 the FOC version. The IOC version is already being supplied to the IAF, while the FOC version production would commence after this certification.

Commenting on the fiscal condition, CD Anantha Krishnan, Director, Finance, HAL, said, “There is absolutely no problem of financials. We have reserves of Rs 12,000 crore. The issue was with the cash flow that is being sorted out. The inflows have started coming from customers (largely the IAF).”

The matter of financials had raised an alarm in the Ministry of Defence as the HAL, a profit-making company, borrowed Rs 960 crore.