An Indian Tejas fighter jet crashed in a fireball during an aerial display at the Dubai Airshow on Friday as stunned spectators looked on, prompting the Indian Air Force to order a court of inquiry into the cause.
Video from the site showed black smoke rising behind a fenced airstrip. Dubai's government shared a photograph of firefighting teams dousing smouldering wreckage.
Jignesh Variya, 46, who was attending the show with his family, told Reuters the fighter jet had been flying for no more than eight or nine minutes and completed two to three laps when it went into a nose-dive, before flattening out but continuing to lose altitude and crashing at around 2:15 p.m. (1015 GMT).
Emergency services work at the site of an aircraft crash during the Dubai Air Show in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Nov. 21, 2025. (EPA Photo)
"I could see three different fireballs when it collided with the ground," he said. "Everybody in the crowd stood up there on their feet, and then maybe in around 30 seconds, the emergency vehicles rushed over to the location at the crash site."
