India’s ace badminton player P.V. Sindhu on Saturday flew in homegrown Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas at the Aero India air show being held in Bengaluru.
“The flight was a wonderful experience. The captain performed various maneouvers, including a loop,” Sindhu told the media after the sortie which lasted for about 40 minutes.
The combat jet’s trainer version was piloted by Group Captain Siddharth Singh, while Sindhu was the co-pilot in the tandem-seater cockpit.
Sindhu is the first woman to fly in a Tejas aircraft.
“The aircraft was on a medium altitude sortie and flew up to a maximum height of about five km,” an Indian Air Force (IAF) official told IANS.
Chief of Army Staff General Bipin Rawat also flew in the aircraft on Thursday.
The LCA on February 20 got the final operational clearance (FOC) from military aviation regulator Centre for Military Airworthiness and Certification (Cemilac) for induction into the IAF as a weaponised fighter jet in its operational fleet.
