Bengaluru residents jolted by deafening burst

Bengaluru residents jolted by deafening burst

Fighter plane was on test sortie: IAF

21/05/2020, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT,BENGALURU

A fighter aircraft on a test sortie, supposedly a Sukhoi-30 MkI at that, flew too fast and perhaps low enough on Wednesday to shatter Bengaluru’s midday peace.

At 1.20 p.m., people living in the east and south-eastern parts of Bengaluru, already harried by COVID-19 fears, were jolted by a deafening burst. Residents of almost half of the city reported on social media platforms that they felt tremors and rattling of windowpanes and objects at home for about nine seconds.

Officials of the State disaster monitoring agency KSNDMC quickly dismissed initial fears of an earthquake.

After hours of confusing information, the mystery was somewhat cleared by the Indian Air Force, around 9.30 p.m. IAF merely said, “A routine IAF Test Flight involving a supersonic profile which took off from Bluru Airport and flew in the allotted airspace well outside City limits. The aircraft was of Aircraft Systems and Testing Establishment (ASTE) [sic].”

The sound was heard as a boom, thunder, blast.

According to multiple unofficial sources, a Sukhoi-30 MkI fighter plane, probably being test flown by ASTE pilots, was flying over the city around the time. It may have gone supersonic — that is, breached the speed of sound (beyond Mach 1 or around 1,200 km per hour).