"All efforts are being made to help passengers. A formal enquiry will be conducted by Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau," the minister said on Twitter.
Thousands of defence personnel are working overtime to rescue lakhs of people still stranded in the floods in Jammu and Kashmir.
In a precarious mission, Wing Commander Charles Simon and Squadron Leader S Venkatramanan and crew rescued a woman in labour from atop a water tank in Chennai. She delivered twins! Archana Masih/Rediff.com spoke to the pilots about that dramatic day.
The seven veterans are Lieutenant General JBS Yadav and Lieutenant General S K Patyal, Lt Gen R N Singh, former director general of army's information services and IT Lt Gen Sunit Kumar, and Lt Gen Nitin Kohli, Colonel R K Tripathi and Wing Commander Navneet Magon.
We salute the Mi-8 today on the occasion of the 32nd anniversary of Operation Cactus. Through its glorious service career, the Mi-8 left an indelible mark on the future by providing the IAF with a lineage of professional helicopter aircrew, says Air Commodore Nitin Sathe (retd).
4 people have died owing to the floods.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday visited the Palam airbase in New Delhi and paid his last respects to Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and other 11 armed force personnel who lost their lives in a chopper crash in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday.
The military aircraft landed at the airport, located around 60 km from the India-China border, on Wednesday.
Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and 11 others were killed when an Indian Air Force helicopter carrying them crashed on Wednesday near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu in apparently foggy conditions, killing 13 people on board, the IAF and other officials said.
"Today is the birthday of Capt Sathe'smother. He had last met his parents in March and was constantly in touch with them over phone since then. They had last spoken a day before yesterday," his nephew Dr Yashodhan Sathe told PTI.
'The present generation, either due to historical amnesia or political propaganda, has been fed a narrative that paints India as an adversary rather than an ally.'
When the IAF veterans' bail petition came up for hearing, in an unprecedented move, senior serving and retired Air Marshals and Air Vice Marshals rallied behind the accused officers and appeared before the court to give sureties for each, something that has never happened ever before.
'No aeroplane in the world has been designed to switch off its engines above 14,500 feet.' 'Thanks to a lot of practice, we were able to execute a flawless landing at DBO at 0900 hours on 31st May, creating history.'
Thirty-four years after he traveled to space, Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma tells Rediff.com's Archana Masih that he looks forward to Gaganyan, India's first manned space mission in 2022.
The crash of the Mi-17 V5 took place at around 6 am when it was on a maintenance mission.
Squadron Leader D Pankaj and Flight Lieutenant S Achudev could not initiate ejection before the crash.
The IAF's mainstream fighter aircraft, the Sukhoi-30MKI and Jaguar, are set to square off with their American counterparts to execute some of the most realistic manoeuvres of its kind during Exercise Red Flag over Alaska starting April 28. Here's what you need to know.
'All enemy positions lay exposed, providing immense information to the Indian Army and IAF to conduct successful flushing out operations.'
'Not a single bullet was fired, but we were warning the enemy not to continue with their antics!' IAF Veteran Air Commodore Nitin Sathe finds out how the Light Combat Helicopter, which will be inducted into the IAF on October 3, was designed, developed and flown.
'For Pakistan, the comfortable old calculations and certainties are no longer valid.' 'Strikes on Indian targets now carry a high risk of retaliation and escalation,' notes Ajai Shukla.
He further said that the JeM claim of responsibility for the Pulwama attack had not been made from inside Pakistan.
The police believe a truck loaded with rubber material parked near the godown caught fire, which spread in no time because of strong winds on Tuesday night.
A US-made C-130J military transport plane, one of the most modern aircraft acquired recently by the Indian Air Force, crashed on Friday near Gwalior, killing all the five crew members, including four officers.
Singh said, "It is extremely shocking and tragic that the prime minister of this country is pointing fingers at opposition parties for questioning the Army or the Air Force.
A Delhi court on Friday framed charges against five persons, including three former naval officers and an ex-IAF Wing Commander, in the 2006 Naval War Room leak case.
Chinook is a heavy lift, tandem rotor helicopter which serves armed forces of 19 countries. It is a multi-role platform and is used for the transport of troops and material among other roles
The Bengaluru skies dazzled with somersaults and stunts by metal birds.
Saurav Chordia's morale patches celebrate bravery and glorify events that are significant for different IAF units or squadrons.
"We hit India by entering inside. Our achievement in Pulwama is the achievement of the entire community under the leadership of Imran Khan. You all also have credit (for it), Chaudhry told the National Assembly on Thursday.
At present, Wg Cdr Varthaman is serving at an IAF base in Rajasthan.
Here is how the two countries stack up militarily, according to a report in AlJazeera.com.
Assistant Sub-Inspector Babu Ram and Constable Altaf Hussain Bhat of Jammu and Kashmir Police were on Saturday posthumously conferred with the Ashoka Chakra and the Kirti Chakra awards respectively on the eve of the 75th Independence Day. While the Ashoka Chakra is India's highest peacetime gallantry honour, Kirti Chakra is the second in order of precedence of peacetime gallantry awards.
'I am grateful to God that I am alive and he has made me differently-abled for a greater cause,' says Wing Commander Shantanu.
'I realised what a great leader he was by the way he took decisions to undertake the most-risky of missions.'
Overall, the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) has focused on building ground-based air defense networks and network-centric operations rather than trying to match the Indian Air Force (IAF) in terms of straight fighter numbers along the border. All air assets fall under the Western Theater Command of the PLA, the largest geographic region of China's five military theater commands.
'We airlifted army personnel wearing lungis to generally unused landing grounds.' 'We were told to keep quiet about what we did or saw.'
The unfortunate thing is that the film will leave a poor impression of the IAF's and indeed of the armed forces's ability to handle sensitive social matters within their professional space, observes Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
The retreating Pakistani troops were heading towards Dacca and they had to be stopped at all costs. The Eastern Army Commander, in his orders to General Sagat Singh, had reiterated that he did not want the troops of 4 Corps to cross the Meghna river. But General Sagat had other plans to threaten Dacca and ensure that the pressure would make the Pakistani commanders capitulate. This is where the IAF helicopters came in.
Russia has blamed "human factor" for the crash of a Sukhoi 30 MKI fighter aircraft in October last year that led to the grounding of the entire fleet of India's frontline fighter plane for a month, a charge denied by the Indian Air Force.
India's doctrinal policy shift in combating terror by carrying out the Balakot air strikes inside Pakistan, appointment of a Chief of Defence Staff and hastening work on military modernisation marked a new beginning in 2019 in dealing with complex security challenges.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances