BANGALORE, Feb 7: Russian Aircraft Corporation, makers of Mig aircraft, on Friday blamed India’s poor quality control of equipment for a string of crashes in the last decade.

“One of the main reasons is the (choice) of spare parts,” said Vladimir Berkovsky, first deputy director general of Mig Corporation.

“Many of them are not certified and not of best quality. We cannot bear any responsibility for such parts,” he said.

“There are only two certified suppliers — one is the Mig Corporation and other is Rosoboron Export.”

The Indian air force decided last year to start phasing out the Mig-21 aircraft in favour of a later-model variant, the Mig-21 Bison.

The 1,200-plane air force lost some 250 Mig-21s, of 1960 and 1970 vintage and worth tens of millions of dollars, in crashes between 1991 and 2000 that killed around 110 pilots, mostly rookies.

In the last two years alone, nine air force planes have crashed while landing or taking off, five during exercise sorties, while another 10 have been lost in wargames. Most of them were single-engined Migs.

Experts have pointed the finger at the absence of an advanced jet trainer to help rookie air force pilots graduate from propeller-driven aircraft to supersonic fighters such as the French-built Mirage-2000 or Russian Sukhoi-30s.

India has been dragging its feet since 1983 to award a 1.6-billion-dollar contract to acquire 66 such trainers despite the fact that New Delhi has already narrowed down its choice to British Aerospace’s Hawk planes.

“You have a high rate of accidents in India and together with India we are working on this problem. The number of accidents per 100,000 hours is less in Europe than in India,” Berkovsky said.

“There is poor compliance with world standards. We are trying to eliminate such incidents together with the Indian air force. We are working and studying this problem,” he said.—AFP