IAF chief Bhadauria flies 'Made in India' HTT-40 aircraft in HAL Bengaluru

Bengaluru, Nov 15: The Indian Air Force Chief (IAF), Air Chief Marshal Rakesh Kumar Singh Bhadauria on Thursday flew the homegrown basic trainer aircraft HTT-40 prototype over aerospace hub for showing strong support for indigenisation.

On this day, the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) tweeted saying that ACM R K S Bhadauria, CAS flew HTT-40 has tested its flying capabilities for one hour. Bhadauria is the first serving Air Chief to fly in the prototype as Chief of Air Force.

HAL also posted images and videos of this incident on their tweeter page.

The Air Chief Marshal R K S Bhadauria assumed office as the IAF Chief on September 30 this year. He was Commanding-in-Chief of its training command and Air Officer Commanding Officer of Flight Test Squadron at the Aircraft and System Testing Establishment in Bengaluru earlier during his illustrious career for over four decades.

On this day, Bhadauria took off at around 1:20 pm and was airborne for an hour along with the chief test pilot Group Captain (retired) K K Venugopal.

According to reports the IAF Chief has been associated with the indigenous trainer aircraft project for a long period now, and the Air Force is also planning to order a sizeable number of these planes from the HAL for its training fleet which is using the Swiss Pilatus planes at the moment.

Bhadauria said the company to speed up the project for certification by the military regulator Cemilac. At the ceremony, the IAF chief also said that HAL must set up modern manufacturing facilities with high production rate from the beginning.

Officiating Chairman of HAL, V M Chamola expressed his gratitude to the Air Chief for his support to the trainer project.

The prototype has reportedly completed major tests and is ready to meet the preliminary staff qualitative requirements of the Air Headquarters for the basic trainer aircraft programme.