- A visitor who witnessed the Tejas jet crash at Dubai Air Show said it descended rapidly and failed to recover
- He told NDTV that he thought the pilot would pull up the jet
- The crash killed the lone pilot, Wing Commander Namansh Syal
A visitor who witnessed the Indian Air Force's Tejas fighter jet crash during an aerial display at the Dubai Air Show said that no one could believe it was really happening.
Abu Bakr, a real estate advisor who also recorded a video of the homegrown aircraft shortly before it crashed, killing the lone pilot, Wing Commander Namansh Syal, on Friday, said the tragedy unfolded "right in front of my eyes".
"First of all, he was doing the manoeuvre as other flights did. And suddenly what we saw is that the jet started to go lower and lower. We thought he would pull up, but he could not pull up the jet, and it just crashed on the spot," he told NDTV on Saturday.
"No one could believe it was happening, really, because in this country, where we live, this type of incident has never happened. And this was the first time everyone witnessed something like this," he said.
He said it was "unbelievable" to watch something like that in real life.
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Bakr was among hundreds of visitors who attended the last day of the airshow, the Middle East's largest aviation event, which started on Monday.
"We had checked the roster of jets, like which jet was going to do the show, and we saw the Tejas was doing it. So obviously, we are Indian, and we were recording it, and we didn't know it was going to end up like this in this tragedy," he said.
He said in the first very few moments of the Tejas jet crash, everyone thought the pilot ejected. "But after checking the video very closely, which I shot, we didn't see any pilot getting out of the jet."
The fighter jet, a single-seat Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), was reportedly flying for about eight minutes and completed two to three laps when it went into a nose-dive at around 2:15 pm (local time). It is being said that the pilot failed to recover from a negative-G manoeuvre at low altitude.
Developed by state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), the aircraft was from a squadron in Tamil Nadu's Sulur and was in service since 2016.
"A court of inquiry is being constituted to ascertain the cause of the accident," the Indian Air Force said in a statement.
The incident marked the second crash involving a Tejas aircraft in less than two years. In March 2024, a Tejas fighter jet went down in Rajasthan's Jaisalmer, the first such accident in the aircraft's 23-year history since its maiden test flight in 2001. The pilot had ejected safely in that accident.
