By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Two Pakistani army pilots have been killed after their training aircraft crashed near the southwestern city of Quetta, the military said.
A Mushshak trainer belonging to Pakistan Army Aviation went down near Nawan Killi, on the outskirts of the capital of Balochistan province, at midday on Monday. The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the military’s media wing, said the crash was caused by a “technical fault”.
The dead were named as Major Husnain Shehzad Humayun, the instructor pilot, and Captain Abdul Samad, a student pilot. “Both pilots… embraced Shahadat (martyrdom) in the unfortunate crash,” the ISPR said in a statement.
The Mushshak is a fixed-gear basic trainer built in Pakistan under licence and developed from the Swedish Saab Safari. It is used by both the army and the air force.
Monday’s crash is the latest in a series of fatal military aviation accidents. In June, an army Mi-17 helicopter crashed during take-off near Muzaffarabad, in Azad Kashmir, killing everyone on board. The same month, two Pakistan Air Force pilots died when their aircraft crashed during a routine training sortie near Mardan, in the northwest. The ISPR said at the time that a board of inquiry had been set up to establish the cause.
In September last year, an army helicopter developing a technical fault came down in the town of Chilas, in Diamer district, killing all five crew members.
Training crashes are not uncommon in Pakistan. Authorities rarely release details of such accidents, and the findings of investigations are not made public.
Deadlier crashes have occurred in recent years. In 2019, 19 people died when a military aircraft came down in a residential area on the outskirts of the garrison city of Rawalpindi, most of them in their homes. In April 2020, a Mushshak crashed near Gujrat, in Punjab province, killing both the instructor and the trainee on board. In 2022, a PAF plane on a training mission crashed in Peshawar, killing the pilot and co-pilot.
Quetta has seen similar losses before. In December 2010, two pilots died when an army Mushshak flying from Zhob crashed into mountains near the city, with the military also citing a technical fault. In 2014, two pilots were injured when another army Mushshak crashed in the hills of Ziarat, about 40km east of Quetta.
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