Tejas makes successful maiden flight

 
With this, the Limited Series Production (LSP) No 3 aircraft has joined the line to undertake development flight trials of the Light Combat Aircraft Tejas towards operational clearance for induction in the IAF by the end of this year, a statement from Defence Research and Development Organisation said.

According to P S Subramanyam, Director, Aeronautical Development Agency, “successful, copy book maiden test flight of LSP-3 is significant on many counts.” A quantum jump in terms of the equipment fit on the aircraft, the LSP-3 is almost the final configuration including the new air-data computers, multi-mode Radar, new communication and navigation equipment and radar warning receiver. All the objectives of the test flight were met within 52 minutes.

Describing the flight as the culmination of efforts of the Tejas Team, Subramanyam said that the LCA (Tejas) programme was now very close to the Initial Operations Clearance, which is to be completed by December 2010.

The test aircraft was flown by Wg Cdr G Thomas, VM of the National Flight Test Centre (NFTC) at ADA. As per procedure, the first flight was accompanied by a chase aircraft which was a Tejas Trainer flown by Gp Capt RR Tyagi, the Chief Test Pilot and Wg Cdr (Retd) PK Raveendran SC, the Group Director (Flight Test). With this, the total number of test flights accumulated across nine test vehicles of the Tejas programme has reached 1,350 and has logged about 800 hrs of flight.