During the last two years approximately 46 per cent of the aircraft crashes in the Indian Air Force (IAF) have been due to technical defects, the Defence Minister A.K. Antony has stated in Parliament.

He said that any IAF aircraft accident is thoroughly investigated by a Court of Inquiry (Col) to ascertain the cause of accident and remedial measures are taken accordingly to check their recurrence in future. IAF has taken various measures relating to invigoration of aviation safety organisation, streamlining of accident/incident reporting procedure, analytical studies and quality audits of the aircraft fleets to identify vulnerable areas and institute remedial measures to reduce aircraft accidents.

An ornithology cell, for bird surveys at flying bases and bird prevention modules, has been established at the Directorate of Aerospace Safety. All flying bases have been visited by senior Aviation safety personnel of the IAF to apprise and caution the operating units about the causes of the accidents and to get views towards enhancing aviation safety.

Accident prevention programmes have been given an added thrust to identify risk prone/hazardous areas specific to the aircraft fleets and operational environment to ensure safe practices/procedures. Steps have been taken by the government to train pilots to prevent accidents due to human error. These include increased use of simulators to practise procedures and emergency actions, focused and realistic training with additional emphasis on the critical aspects of mission, introduction of crew resource management (CRM) and operational risk management to enable safe mission launches, aviation psychology courses and introduction of aerospace safety capsules in the ab initio training of air crew.