President Droupadi Murmu on Wednesday undertook a sortie in a Rafale fighter jet from the Air Force Station in Ambala, Haryana — one of the Indian Air Force’s most crucial bases and the operational hub of the recent Operation Sindoor.
Air Chief Marshal A. P. Singh also flew in a separate aircraft from the same airbase. Before boarding the Rafale, President Murmu donned a G-suit, posed for photographs with the pilot while holding her helmet, and waved from the cockpit before take-off at 11:27 a.m.
Upon her arrival, she was accorded a ceremonial guard of honour at the airbase.
The Rafale jets, manufactured by French aerospace giant Dassault Aviation, were formally inducted into the Indian Air Force in September 2020 at Ambala. The first batch of five aircraft arrived from France in July 2020 and joined the 17 Squadron, known as the “Golden Arrows.”
These same Rafale jets played a pivotal role in Operation Sindoor, launched by India in retaliation to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack. The operation, conducted in early May, targeted multiple terror infrastructures in Pakistan-controlled territories and concluded after four days of intense cross-border clashes.
President Murmu, the supreme commander of the Indian Armed Forces, had previously flown a sortie in a Sukhoi-30 MKI fighter jet from Tezpur Air Force Station in Assam in April 2023.
Former Presidents A. P. J. Abdul Kalam and Pratibha Patil had also taken similar sorties in Sukhoi-30 MKI aircraft from Pune’s Lohegaon Airbase in 2006 and 2009, respectively — continuing a legacy of India’s top constitutional authority connecting directly with the nation’s defence forces.
