In a first, two Mirage 2000 jets land at Saifai | Latest News India - Hindustan Times
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In a first, two Mirage 2000 jets land at Saifai

Hindustan Times | By, Lucknow
May 17, 2015 12:53 AM IST

In a first for the Indian Air Force (IAF), the country or any village in India, two Mirage 2000 fighter jets were test landed at and flown back from the Saifai village airstrip on Saturday.

In a first for the Indian Air Force (IAF), the country or any village in India, two Mirage 2000 fighter jets were test landed at and flown back from the Saifai village airstrip on Saturday.

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Saifai is the ancestral village of the former Union defence minister and Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav.

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The district magistrate of Etawah, Nitin Bansal, confirmed the IAF’s Saturday venture by Central Air Command but said that he was not aware as to which air base the two jets came and went back to. However, the fighter jets were reportedly from the Mirage 2000 squadron based at Gwalior air base.

The Saturday’s exercise came the same week the chief minister had a meeting at his residence with the Central Air Command delegation where he agreed in principle for making of a highway runway of the Air Force on Agra-Lucknow expressway, the first highway runway to come up in the country.

In the meeting, the Air Force also said that it would help Uttar Pradesh in training its State Disaster Response Force and would also help the state whenever needed in any calamity or disaster relief.

The district magistrate (DM) and some officers were present during the event, but the IAF had prohibited any photography or videography of it. Though, they themselves captured the whole exercise on high resolution cameras – both still and video.

Bansal said that IAF did the test as they may use the airstrip for any emergency purposes or exercises.

IAF had deployed a substantial support staff of its personnel at the Saifai airstrip that inspected, studied, prepared the airstrip before the landing and studied it after the take off.

Mirage 2000 is a single-engine fourth generation jet fighter manufactured by Dassault Aviation, France. India is the only country in the subcontinent to have it.

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Pankaj Jaiswal is Chief of Bureau, Uttar Pradesh and covers politics. His continued interest in rural, distress, and development journalism, fetched him a handful of prestigious awards and fellowships. Pankaj is a photo-journalist too and tweets at @augustus29lotus

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