The company also offered an advance sale of all critical spare parts for the proposed L159B aircraft to clinch the 15-year-old military trainer deal, it said in a statement here.

"We offer to arrange a safety stock of the required components for India, which can be purchased up front upon signing of the contract," Aero Vodochody chief managing director Antonin Jakubse said in the statement.

With the advance sale of spares, the Czech company argued, India would have a "totally risk-free" purchase with the up keep of the aircraft not vulnerable to potential US restrictions on the sale of critical components.

The statement said that "...going a step forward, Aero Vodochody is also open to setting up of India-based production six out of the 15 critical avionics parts used in L159B."

The Czech Republic is pitching its trainer L159B in place of 66 Hawk jets from Britain's BAE Systems which is yet to receive approval from Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's cabinet.

Other US and Brazilian companies are also in the fray.

Lockheed Martin is pitching its T-50 trainer jets and this year invited India to participate in a Lockheed-led Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) global project, launched last October.

Brazil has also jumped on the bandwagon to offer its AMX-T trainer jets to India.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) has been scouring international arms markets since 1985 for suitable jets to train pilots to graduate from subsonic trainers to supersonic fighters.

The trainers are meant to replace the decades-old subsonic trainers called "Surya Kirans."

The air force has suffered a string of accidents involving Russian-made supersonic MiG fighters.

The ageing MiG-21 aircraft, many of them 30 years old, are so accident-prone that they have been dubbed "flying coffins."

SPACE.WIRE