August 21 , 2009 | RSS

Panaji: An Indian Navy Sea Harrier combat jet crashed Friday off the Goa coast, killing its pilot, Lt. Cdr. Saurav Saxena, an official said.

The single seater fighter had taken off from the Dabolim airport here at around 10 a.m. for a routine sortie and crashed soon after, the official added.
Efforts were underway to locate the wreckage of the twin-engined V/STOL (vertical/short take-off and landing jet).

The Indian Navy’s Sea Harriers, which were inducted in the early 1980, are deployed on India’s lone aircraft carrier INS Viraat that is undergoing a life-extending refit at the Cochin Shipyard.

The Dabolim airport is the land base for the jets, which were recently retrofitted to enable them to fire beyond visual range (BVR) missiles.