Surya Kiran pilot dead in Aero India rehearsal crash
Wing Commander Sahil Gandhi died after two SKAT Hawk aircraft collided

The two aircraft moments before they crashed | Photo: Saurabh Joshi/StratPost

The Indian Air Force (IAF) lost a pilot on Tuesday when two Hawk aircraft of the Surya Kiran Aerobatics Team (SKAT) collided during a rehearsal of the flight display for the inauguration of Aero India 2019, at Yelahanka in Bangalore.

Wing Commander Sahil Gandhi, who had been with SKAT since the team was re-formed in 2016 with the induction of the Hawk aircraft, went down in his aircraft after it collided with another SKAT Hawk aircraft piloted by Wing Commander Vijay Shelke and Squadron Leader Tejeshwar Singh. Although both suffered injuries, Shelke and Singh managed to eject from their aircraft successfully.

Amateur video footage of the flight posted on social media appeared to show the aircraft colliding while still in the inverted position, apparently beginning to disengage.

First Person

Your correspondent was among a handful of photographers on top of the observation area at the Flight Display Director’s (FDD) tower on Tuesday, photographing the routines of the aircraft rehearsing for the display in sequence, as they would perform for the inauguration on Wednesday.

A number of aircraft and aircraft teams performed earlier in the morning, including a U.S. Air Force F-16, a Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), a Light Utility Helicopter (LUH) and a Light Combat Helicopter (LCH) of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), a team of Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopters (ALH). Right after the Yak aerobatic display team completed their display, the SKAT took over the canvas above us, having taken off from Yelahanka a little earlier.

By this time, the sun was high and we were beginning to roast on the roof of the observation area.

The SKATS did a few manoeuvres with their full nine-ship complement. Some of those manoeuvres ended in the aircraft splitting up from formation. Then, alternately, solo or two-ship formations began their manoeuvres.

Two aircraft began their flight along the runway and past the observation area, flying low for a manoeuvre made famous by the movie Top Gun, in which the character of Tom Cruise holds his aircraft inverted over an enemy fighter.

We were busy snapping our shutters and just as the formation grew smaller in our lenses, we dropped our cameras to check our shots.

A moment later, I looked up to see the aircraft still in a mirror inversion, appearing to merge in the distance. They separated and for a second I thought they were conducting a new manoeuvre altogether – seeming to sway in the air like two pieces of paper blowing in the wind.

Immediately I, and everyone around me, realised something had gone wrong. Maybe a second later, we saw two parachutes in the sky and the aircraft disappeared from view in the sky. A fraction of a second later, there was a large explosion and a massive plume of smoke formed immediately some distance ahead of the runway.

There was stunned, shocked silence all around us and then everyone moved at once. Emergency vehicles were already beginning to scream, speeding across from the other end of the runway.

After a quick discussion with fellow journalist Angad Singh, who was with me on the site, we were suddenly no longer sure if there were only two pilots in the two aircraft.

We pulled out the photos we had taken and began zooming in to see if we could make out how many pilots had been onboard the two aircraft. We realised that one of the aircraft (the one that was on the bottom in the formation) appeared to have two pilots in the cockpit. There had to be a third pilot. But we had seen only two parachutes. We hoped that we had missed seeing the third ejection because of the hazy sky and because the entire incident took place in a handful of seconds.

Meanwhile, all flight operations had been suspended, except for the two Mi-17 helicopters flying SAR missions.

As we waited beside the runway for the next two hours, it became increasingly certain, there had been a third pilot who had not been able to eject successfully.