Advertisement
At around 1.20 p.m. on Tuesday, residents of Bengaluru were jolted by a deafening noise. They also felt tremors and rattling of window panes and objects in their homes for about 9 seconds. They initially feared that it was an earthquake. After a lot of confusion and that too in the midst of the current pandemic, the Indian Air Force cleared the air and allayed the fears of residents and declared that it was an IAF Test Flight which took off from Bengaluru Airport that caused the noise.
The Aircraft was part of the Aircraft Systems and Testing Establishments (ASTE) whose Test Pilots and Flight Test Engineers routinely test out all aeroplanes. The sonic boom was heard while the aircraft was decelerating from supersonic to subsonic speed between 36,000 and 40,000 feet altitude. The sound would be audible by people even if the aircraft was flying 65 to 80 kms away.
Advertisement
