NEW DELHI, APRIL 30: India’s newly acquired fleet of Hawk fighter trainers has been grounded for a second time after one of them crashed at the Bidar airbase on Tuesday afternoon while taking off on a training mission. Both pilots escaped unharmed.

While the entire fleet has been facing problems since the induction in February due to lack of spares, the grounding comes weeks after the IAF discovered that the new aircraft contained parts that were rusted and appeared to be old and used.

This came as a surprise as the trainers — 66 were bought in a Rs 8,000-crore deal inked in 2004 — are new and were inducted barely three months ago. In fact, only 10 aircraft have arrived until now from the assembly line in UK.

After Air Hqs informed the Ministry of Defence about the matter, the Defence Secretary has been asked to head for London on May 19 to raise the issue with top UK government officials.

As first reported by The Indian Express on March 23, the fleet had earlier been grounded, shortly after the aircraft arrived in January, due to lack of spares and technical problems.

Sources at Air Hqs said that the British High Commissioner has also been contacted and an official communication has been sent to the original manufacturers, the UK-based BAE Systems.

It is learnt that the problem with the Hawks pertains to certain parts like the undercarriage and the pitot-static tube —it gives the pilots feedback on airspeed and altitude — that IAF technical teams discovered were rusted.

The fleet will now remain grounded until the reason behind Tuesday’s crash is investigated. The IAF’s training schedule is likely to get affected as the first course on the new trainers was set to begin at Bidar in July.

While a court of inquiry has been ordered into the crash and human error is not ruled out, IAF sources say that initial investigation points to a fault either in the undercarriage or the yaw controllers that are used to stabilise the aircraft. The IAF says that both pilots were experienced instructors with several hundred hours of combat flying in their logbooks.

Officials from BAE Systems, who concede that there are “small issues” regarding the Hawk, say that it would not be correct to link the accident to the matter.

“A number of small issues have arisen with the Hawks that have been delivered and are in service with the Indian Air Force. We take resolution of these issues very seriously and are working closely with the IAF to resolve these, to both their and our satisfaction,” said a BAE spokesperson.

But IAF says that ever since their induction, the trainers have enjoyed a low serviceability rate of 40 per cent. This means that the aircraft spend most of the time on the ground rather than on training missions and at any given time, only 4 out of the ten trainers are fit for flying.

“The Hawks are not flying around much as they have a low serviceability rate. We would like an ideal serviceability rate of 80 per cent which would be normal for any newly acquired aircraft,” said a senior IAF officer.

A major embarrassment was averted at the induction ceremony in February, which was presided over by Defence Minister A K Antony, after the IAF “barely managed” to get four trainers off the ground for the traditional fly past.

The British made trainers are meant to fill a vital gap in India’s fighter pilot training programme by replacing the MiG-21s that are currently being used to impart final stage training to fighter pilots. The Hawks were procured in 2004, more than two decades after the IAF asked for an advanced jet trainer to curb pilot losses during training.