The Kabul Tribune (KT) — An Indian Tejas fighter jet crashed in a ball of fire during an aerial display at the Dubai Airshow on Friday, killing the pilot and shocking thousands of spectators, Reuters reported.
Video from the scene showed thick black smoke rising behind a fenced airstrip as emergency teams rushed to contain the blaze. Dubai’s government released an image of firefighters dousing the burning wreckage.
Jignesh Variya, 46, who attended the show with his family, told Reuters that the jet had been in the air for only eight to nine minutes and had completed two to three laps before going into a nose-dive. The aircraft briefly leveled out but continued losing altitude before crashing at around 2:15 p.m. (1015 GMT).
“I could see three different fireballs when it hit the ground,” Variya said. “Everybody stood up, and within about 30 seconds, emergency vehicles were already at the crash site.”
This was the second known crash involving the single-engine Tejas fighter, manufactured by the state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd and powered by GE engines. The first crash occurred during a training exercise in India in 2024.
The Tejas, whose name means “brilliance” in Sanskrit, is considered central to India’s effort to modernize its fleet, which still relies heavily on Russian and Soviet-era aircraft.
The crash happened on the final day of the Middle East’s largest aviation event, which began Monday. Witnesses said flying resumed later in the day, with jets returning to the skies above the airshow site.
“A court of inquiry is being constituted to ascertain the cause of the accident,” the Indian Air Force said in a statement. It confirmed that the sole pilot aboard had died.
The UAE aviation authority did not immediately comment on whether it would lead a local investigation. India’s embassy said it was in contact with Emirati officials. Experts cautioned it was too early to determine the cause of the crash.
India aims to operate nearly 220 Tejas aircraft — along with advanced Mk-1A versions — over the next decade as pending orders are completed. However, rollout of the fleet has been slowed by delays in engine deliveries from GE, which the company has attributed to post-pandemic supply chain issues.
“It is the first fully domestic Indian fighter not based on foreign designs,” said defense analyst Francis Tusa. He noted that export interest in the jet has been limited so far, though work is advancing on the next-generation Tejas Mark II.
India had been showcasing the Tejas to potential foreign buyers throughout the six-day airshow, one of the world’s premier marketplaces for military jets and commercial aircraft.
Friday’s incident marks the first recorded crash at the world’s third-largest airshow, after Paris and Farnborough. Airshow crashes were relatively common in the 1970s, but strict safety measures introduced in recent decades have made such accidents rare.
Past incidents include a Sukhoi Su-30 crash at the 1999 Paris Airshow and a MiG-29 crash a decade earlier; all pilots survived. In 2019, Britain suspended aerobatic displays during the Farnborough Airshow's public days after a deadly crash involving a vintage Hawker Hunter in 2015.
