Bangalore, June 02: The first flight of Tejas Aircraft LSP-4 (Limited Series Production aircraft) took to the skies here today, going supersonic touching a 1.1 Mach speed.
The aircraft took off at 1110 hrs from HAL’s Bangalore airport and landed forty minutes later, a DRDO release said.
The flight marks for the first time a Tejas aircraft flying in the configuration that will be finally delivered to the Indian Air Force.
This milestone is another step in the direction of releasing the Tejas for IAF service, which is planned for December 2010, it said.
In the sortie, test pilot Gp Capt Suneet Krishna flew the aircraft to an altitude of 11 kms and went supersonic, touching 1.1 Mach speed with Test Director, Gp Capt D Chakravorty, guiding him from the telemetry facility of National Flight Test Centre.
—Agencies