{"id":314819,"date":"2019-09-02T09:35:11","date_gmt":"2019-09-02T09:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=314819"},"modified":"2019-09-02T09:35:11","modified_gmt":"2019-09-02T09:35:11","slug":"abhinandan-varthaman-flies-with-iaf-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/abhinandan-varthaman-flies-with-iaf-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"Abhinandan Varthaman flies with IAF Chief"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-314820 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/abhinanadan.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"542\" height=\"239\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2019\/09\/abhinanadan.jpg 542w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2019\/09\/abhinanadan-300x132.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 542px) 100vw, 542px\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman,\u00a0who was recently awarded the\u00a0Vir Chakra for shooting down a Pakistan fighter jet in a dogfight, flew a MiG-21 fighter jet with Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa on Monday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Varthaman was not the only one returning to the MiG-21 cockpit after a long gap. So was BS Dhanoa.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">They took off a sortie on the MiG-21 jet from the Pathankot air base this morning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">This was Air Chief Marshal last MiG-21 sortie flown with Wing Commander.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The IAF chief who is also a MiG-21 pilot flew the plane during the Kargil conflict (May-July 1999).<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Wing Commander Abhinandan had scripted history in February this year by downing an F-16. He had been taken captive by Pakistan and was released two days after his capture.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman,\u00a0who was recently awarded the\u00a0Vir Chakra for shooting down a Pakistan fighter jet in a dogfight, flew a MiG-21 fighter jet with Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa on Monday. Varthaman was not the only one returning to the MiG-21 cockpit after a long gap. So was BS Dhanoa. They took off a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":314820,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2009,2913,2014],"tags":[10968,11034,10953,2699],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314819"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314819"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314821,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314819\/revisions\/314821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/314820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}