India’s indigenous Tejas LSP-7 makes maiden flight at HAL

The country’s indigenously developed light combat aircraft (LCA), Tejas LSP-7, made its maiden flight on Friday.

The Limited Series Production-7 aircraft took off from the HAL airport at 4.27 pm and flew for 28 minutes.

The LSP-7 aircraft, along with LSP-8, will be offered to the Indian Air Force for user evaluation trials (UET).

The flight was also significant considering that for the first time, Production Test Schedule was used for the first flight of an LSP aircraft in this programme.

Showing the level of confidence in LSP-7, for the first time a prototype was not accompanied by a customary ‘chase’ aircraft during its maiden flight.

Gp Capt KK Venugopal was at the controls in the cockpit and Wg Cdr Kabadwal of the National Flight Test Centre (NFTC) flew as the test director in the telemetry.

During the test flight, performance of the aircraft systems, including multi-mode radar (MMR), helmet mounted display system (HMDS), auto-pilot and instrument landing system (ILS) was satisfactory.