After a fatal accident last month and reports of another, non-fatal accident last week in a training hop, the Romanian Air Force has, after almost exactly 60 years, announced the grounding and immediate retirement of their Mig-21 LanceR fleet.
Today the Chief of Defence of the Romania Major-General Daniel Petrescu announced that the Romanian Air Force will immediately stop the flying activities of the MiG-21 LanceR.
The measure was taken in view of the major incidents and crashes during the operations with the MiG-21 LanceR. The Air Policing tasks will be taken over by the Romanian Air Force F-16s, supported by its NATO allies. Also the speed up of the the delivery of the previously ordered 32 F-16s of the Royal Norwegian Air Force is being looked at.
With the withdrawal of the MiG-21 comes an end to an era of 60 years of Romanian MiG-21s. The very first MiG-21F-13 was delivered to the Romanian Air Force on February 13, 1962.
A pilot was lost in a fatal accident last month, from what I've heard they think the door to one of the wing gears ripped off and caused sudden catastrophic damage to the aircraft. There's rumors it happened again at a lower speed earlier this month and the plane was landed safely. One of the demonstrators last summer was filmed at an airshow with a similar problem- a main gear door that failed to close for the duration of the demonstration flight (photo below). there's already a push to give them to Ukraine in the hopes that they can get some use out of the airframes, or possibly cannibalize them for parts if needed.
