The announcement comes after Defence Minister George Fernandes attended a conference to debate the safety record of the world's fourth largest air force.

"The IAF will now phase out its MiG-21 F/L version, while the newly upgraded MiG-21 Bison variant will remain in service for another 10 years," an official said.

Delegates at the closed-door meeting blamed the absence of design data for the recurring crashes and said India should ask for such information from the suppliers of both Jaguar bombers and MiG fighters to help the IAF rectify technical flaws.

"Although both the MiGs and the Jaguars are manufactured under licence here, India does not have the design data of these aircraft, which are coming in the way of rectifying some of the major faults," the official said.

The 1,200-aircraft IAF has lost some 250 MiG-21s, of 1960 and 1970 vintage, worth tens of millions of dollars in crashes between 1991 and 2000, killing around 110 pilots, mostly rookies.

In the last two years alone, nine IAF planes have crashed while landing or taking off, five during exercise sorties while another 10 have been lost in wargames. Most of them were single-engined MiGs.

Experts have pointed the finger at the absence of an advanced jet trainer to help rookie IAF fliers graduate from propeller-driver aircraft to supersonic fighters such as French-built Mirage-2000 or Russian Sukhoi-30s.

India has been dragging its feet since 1983 to award a 1.6-billion-dollar contract to acquire 66 such trainers despite the fact that New Delhi has already narrowed down its choice to British Aerospace's Hawk planes.

"In Friday's meeting, the IAF said it was hopeful of acquiring jet trainers during the current financial year (ending March 2003)," the official said.

Indian MiGs have earned the dubious nickname of "flying coffins" for their terrible air safety record.

The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which was India's main arms supplier, dealt a crippling blow to the IAF which was dependent on the socialist bloc for spares, armament and military aviation technology.

The decision came as the civilian death toll from Tuesday's crash of an IAF Jaguar rose from six to nine. The three fatalities have succumbed to injuries from falling debris from the British-made jet in Ambala town.

A MiG-21 aircraft crashed on September 9 in the same town.

SPACE.WIRE