By Shivam Patel, Federico Maccioni and Tim Hepher
NEW DELHI/DUBAI (Reuters) -An Indian Tejas fighter jet crashed in a ball of fire in front of horrified spectators during an aerial display at the Dubai Airshow on Friday, and the Indian Air Force said it was setting up a court of inquiry to investigate the cause.
Video from the site showed black smoke rising behind a fenced airstrip. Dubai's government shared a photograph of firefighting teams dousing smouldering wreckage.
Jignesh Variya, 46, who was attending the show with his family, told Reuters the fighter jet had been flying for no more than eight or nine minutes and completed two to three laps when it went into a nose-dive, before flattening out but continuing to lose altitude and crashing at around 2:15 p.m. (1015 GMT).
"I could see three different fireballs when it collided with the ground," he said. "Everybody in the crowd stood up there on their feet, and then maybe in around 30 seconds, the emergency vehicles rushed over to the location at the crash site."
CRASH HAPPENED ON FINAL DAY OF AIRSHOW
It was the second known crash of the single-engine 4.5-generation fighter jet, which is built by state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd and powered by General Electric engines. The first crash was during an exercise in India in 2024.
The homegrown jet, whose name means "brilliance" in Sanskrit, is seen as crucial for India's efforts to modernise its air force fleet of mainly Russian and ex-Soviet fighters.
The crash happened during the last day of the airshow, the Middle East's largest aviation event, which started on Monday. Flying had resumed later on Friday, witnesses said, with jets back in the sky above the show site.
"A court of inquiry is being constituted to ascertain the cause of the accident," the Indian Air Force said in a statement. It confirmed the sole pilot had been killed.
The UAE aviation authority was not immediately available to comment on whether it would lead a local investigation. The Indian embassy said it was in touch with UAE authorities. Experts stressed it was too early to say what caused the crash.
GE said in a statement it was ready to support the investigation.
Dubai's government said emergency teams were managing the situation on-site.
First manufactured in 2001 but dating back to studies first carried out two decades earlier, the Tejas was designed as a light combat jet to replace India's fleet of Russian MiG-21s.
The IAF expects to operate a fleet of almost 220 Tejas fighters and its advanced Mk-1A variants over the next decade after HAL completes the pending orders.
ACCIDENTS RARE AT MAJOR AIRSHOWS
But the rollout of the fighter has been delayed due to slow deliveries of engines from GE, which has blamed supply chain issues faced after COVID-19.
"It is the first fully domestic Indian fighter that is not based on foreign designs," said British-based defence analyst Francis Tusa, adding that export interest so far had been limited. "There is work on a Tejas Mark II," he said.
India had been gauging interest from potential foreign buyers at the week-long airshow, a major arena for global arms and airliner markets and well-known for bold displays making use of wide vistas of airspace.
Friday's accident was the first on record for the world's third-largest airshow, after Paris and Britain's Farnborough. Airshow accidents were common in the 1970s, but have become rare at the top aerospace events as safety restrictions were tightened in recent decades.
In 1999, a Sukhoi Su-30 crashed after touching the ground during a similar manoeuvre at the Paris Airshow, and a MiG-29 crashed at the same event a decade earlier. All crew ejected safely.
In 2019, Britain halted aerobatic displays during public days at the Farnborough Airshow following the crash of a vintage Hawker Hunter at a small show on Britain's south coast in 2015.
(Reporting by Shivam Patel in New Delhi, Federico Maccioni and Tim Hepher in Dubai; Additional reporting by Additional reporting by Aditi Shah in New Delhi; Editing by YP Rajesh, Alex Richardson and Andrew Heavens)
