RMAF MiG29 fighter jet crashes in Kemaman

[Ski]

News update by the Star Newsdesk

KUALA LUMPUR: A Royal Malaysian Air Force MiG29 fighter jet crashed at the Ketengah Perwira oil palm plantation in Kemaman, Terengganu today but the pilot is believed to have ejected safely.

Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said the incident occurred at 10.22am and a search and rescue for the aircraft and the pilot is underway.


He said the aircraft went down 16 nautical miles north west of the Kuantan airbase where the MiG squadron is based.

Najib said as a precautionary measures, all the other MiG aircraft had been grounded temporarily.

"Preliminary reports said that the engine was on fire before it crashed. Two other MiGs were flying together with the aircraft that went down.

"The other pilots spotted where the pilot, who ejected safely, and aircraft had gone down and help is on the way," said Najib.

The RMAF has 17 MiG29 fighter jets purchased from Russia.

Does anybody know the cost of this plane...now who or what is RMAF going to blame?

[orchipalar]

Err...malaysia is one of the few nations in the world who would fly the MIG29...should Orchi isn't wrong...this fighter was first introduced in 1972...

[wildbill]

This is an accident. Most probably the pilot license is going to be gantung. May be Najib's license also kena gantung b'cos it take two to make an accident.

RMAF and Russian will be cleared from this incident. If not, this will be a bad precedent b'cos if our driving license kena gantung if we meet an accident, then the JPJ and traffic police will be got blame too.

[Gohead]

Dulu dulu, beli mesin jahit Singer, can last forever.
La ni, beli mesin jahit semi-automatic Singer, kena cari barang ganti.

The Russian pun dah ikut macam barang Jepun;
Cukup time, kena cari replacement;
Ter-skip maintenance routines;
Terus, terjerumpuk.

What goes around, comes around.
Biasa le......

[lord]

On a more serious note, what mind boggles me is the attitude of our government to practise the 'tidak apa attitude'. I have on numerous occasions, while growing up, sat in a Charlie130, Karibu, Nuri and Allouette. Trust me, Karibu should have been grounded a long time ago. But I still see them flying over Subang once in a while. Man, that aircraft is a flying time-bomb if you ask me or any ex-air force personnel. But what does the gov say, "if its not broken, use it!"

Back to the present story, why is the gov so unconfident with the rest of the aircraft that it should instruct the rest of the planes to be grounded if their periodic service is good. The engineers would have found the fault before it took off. Or, were the engineers busy having tea when they should have taken a closer look at the jet? Aiyaahhh, not my harta what. Who cares?? Joe, you are talking about a multi-million dollar equipment. And it is supposed to be 'fault-free'!! When it comes to aircraft, they don't accept 99.99%!! It HAS to be a 100% fit, period. How the hell did it happen? Or, was it the fault of the pilot. Was he another 23 year old Capt from UTM who was sleeping while flying?

You get cheap spares, half-past-six service plan/personnel and a tight budget coupled with very old and cheap planes, you have a recipe for disaster, my friends!! The gov should, instead of sponsoring idiot sportsmen who can't win a medal in any jacksh!t competition, build kompleks sukan one after another for GOD knows what the fook for, channel the money to newer military equipments. For a country whose leaders make hell of a noise as though we are second world-power in line after the US, we sure have 'mercun buluh' to shout about as our state of the art military attire, man !!

And what do you have now, 16 grounded MIG29's, 1 crashed, second-hand SkyHawks and a gov making foolish decisions with the public fund.

DAMN, I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!

[aroki]

MiG 29 is one of the Russians latest plane. Maybe the MiG series was from 1972. The plane is pretty high tech. The best is to wait for the investigation,which we may never hear or get the whole truth.That's is life here.

Lucky no one was injured or killed. Too bad to loose a good plane. Love to fly in one of those MiGs.

[Ski]

Tax payers money,man this jet must cost a bomb and maintaining it is no joke...what a waste of public funds.
Initial investigations states of a fire, then I guess Najib should ground the maintenance engineers not the Migs.

[orchipalar]

Err...in 1998...a MiG 29 Fulcrum costs USD 27,000,000 each in the market...err...but in our market here.....who knows?

http://rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679/K=cos...sia/mig-29.htm

[orchipalar]

Err...more info...

http://rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679/K=mig...urevich_MiG-29

[wildbill]

Why we need the MIG or fighter jet for

If really a time for war, do you think we have the chance??? Noway Jose. So why we waste the money (in this case, palm oil) ? With one MIG, we can build more schools and hospitals.

Another issue to ponder, why we need a angkasaNaut for? Are we going to purchase a space shuttle (with palm oil) and send the angkasaNaut to space, where?

[KelvC]

Why we need the MIG or fighter jet for

If really a time for war, do you think we have the chance??? Noway Jose. So why we waste the money (in this case, palm oil) ? With one MIG, we can build more schools and hospitals.

If memory serves me right, palm oil price was high at that time and was supplied to the Russian simply because it was expensive there as well. Give palm oil to local building contractors and what are they going to do with it? Build swimming pool? Palm oil here cheap, palm oil outside at least got commercial value. At least can barter mah.

[wildbill]

Err...KelvC

Do you indicate nobody will want palm oil unless we barter trade?

Why not barter trade with building material, farm equipments, medical supplies or other things Malaysia needed the most?

It's matter of choice....gun or barter.

[JackRyan1975]

As far as I remembered, of the 18 MiGs purchased, our pilots have crashed 2. So it doesn't even take enemy fire to destroy our fleet of latest aircraft. Imagine what would happen if we are under attack? Instead of intercepting, probably the authorities would let the attack be carried out first and then to "examine and evaluate the impact" before starting up the remaining Nuris, if there are any left.

[aroki]

Why do we need grills in our house...as a deterrent. same reasons why we do need fighter planes.Be prepared than be sorry. Look at the countries around us, they all have fighter planes,of which Singapore has state of the art planes.

yes two planes hv crashed but doesn't mean we should not have them. Fighter planes do crash all over the world. Even in USA they do, the son of the former USA ambassador to Msia died in an exercise some time in 2002 in the USA.Even a Singapore fighter crashed lately in Australia due to pilot loosing control due to blackout caused by hi 'G' force. Not sure what plane it was but it was not a thousand dollar plane.

saw this guys perform during F1..they were good. Not sure in combat but we need to give the pilot the benefit of doubt. They do put their life at risk and piloting the MiG 29 i'm sure is not a piece of cake. and humans do make mistake..this May well be a USD27million mistake.

[JackRyan1975]

It is not a question of doing away with the MiGs that we have. Of course it is good that we have them.

What worries me is the statistics. The occasional plane do crash in US/Singapore, but if you compare their inventory with ours, I think statistically our record is bad i.e. crashing 2 planes out of 18, is a worse record than crashing 2 planes out of 1800.