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Swedish Gripen fighter jet crashes after bird strike near Ronneby

Saab Gripen fighter jet at the Kaivopuisto air show, June 2017. Image: Tuomo Salonen /SIM/Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 4.0

A Swedish Gripen jet fighter crashed after colliding with a bird in southern Sweden on Tuesday, August 21, authorities said, adding the pilot ejected safely.

“It was a bird collision and the pilot had to eject,” Johan Lundgren, spokesman at the Swedish Armed Forces told AFP.

The pilot was on a training mission in the Saab JAS 39 Gripen.

The incident happened eight kilometres (five miles) north of a military air base near the southern Swedish city of Ronneby, and the pilot was taken to a hospital for a check-up.

Authorities said the accident happened in a forested area and no casualties were reported.

In 2017, a Gripen fighter jet crashed in Thailand during an air show, killing the pilot. And in 2015, another jet leased by Hungary skid off the runway at a Czech airbase and was completely damaged.

Sweden reports about 400 such bird trike incidents a year, Charlotte Billgren at the Swedish Transport Agency told the TT news agency.


With reporting from AFP

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