Bengaluru, November 14, 2019: Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria, Chief of the Air

Staff undertook his maiden flight in the HAL designed and developed Basic Trainer
Aircraft HTT 40 here today. During the sortie he assessed the aircraft flying
characteristics including stall and spin. The aircraft took to the skies at 1320
hours and remained airborne for an hour. The CAS was accompanied by HAL’s Chief
Test Pilot (FW), Gp Capt (Retd) KK Venugopal.

ACM Bhadauria became the first serving Air Chief to fly in HAL developed aircraft
at the prototype stage as Chief of the Air Force. He expressed his satisfaction
with the aircraft performance and appreciated the design, project and flight test
teams for having achieved the commendable progress. The project now needs to be
speeded up for certification and HAL must target setting of modern manufacturing
facilities with high production rate from the beginning, he added.

Mr. VM Chamola, Offg. CMD, HAL thanked the Air Chief’s support and also
congratulated the team HTT 40 for realising the project in good time. Mr. Arup
Chatterjee, Director (Engg. R&D) said the Air Chief’s support enables the
indigenous capabilities of the defence organisations like HAL to rise to the
occasion and meet the desired metrics in quality, cost and time lines. Mr Shekhar
Shrivastava, CEO(BC) stated that details for the production facilities required for
producing HTT 40 in desired numbers have concurrently been worked out and HAL’s
production will match the requirements of the IAF.

The HTT 40 has completed all major test points and meets the Preliminary Staff
Qualitative Requirements (PSQR) issued by Air Headquarters for the BTA programme.
HTT-40 has successfully completed stalls, engine relights, inverted flying,
acrobatic flying and systems testing. The Basic Operational clearance and user
evaluation trials readiness is expected soon. The design team at HAL is motivated
with the Air Chief’s sortie.