What is it with the recent escalation in the number of PAF airplanes crashing almost every month these past 6 months? Just now while listening to the FM I heard about yet another plane crash in Rajasthan area with Alhamdulillah the pilot being safe.

A plane and a fighter plane at that, is worth multimillion rupees while the pilot and copilot are priceless….losing any of the three is not a small setback…it’s a catastrophe. My Chacha who has now resigend from PAF used to be a fighter pilot on ‘mirages’ too and he has had two ejections while preparing for the airshows of the 23rd March’s march pasts. I know what follows is not easy…the moment between the cockpit opening and the seat throwing the pilot out and then the moment between the jumper tries to open his parachute and tries to keep his thoughts from  looking at the hard ground approaching him fast…these moments are full of anxiety and yet the strict interrogations later on, can make the person want to jump out of a plane anyway…

However the question here is this that we all know that machines are unreliable and may bail out on you anytime but does this mean we need newer and a bit more reliable vehicles? And say, that even if there is some overlooking on the side of the engineers and the aviation crew even then maybe there is just as much effort as they can put in a badly depreciated and frequently flown plane?

Everytime a jewel falls down from the crown of PAF, new reports are opened and new investigations are started but the point is that how many chances are one too many?….God bless the hawks that guard our skies and make us proud of them!!