Air Chief Marshal Hasan Mahmood Khan is misinformed about the availability of F-7 spare parts. China does not manufacture any spare parts for F-7 and its derivative fighter jets. China shut down all manufacturing facilities related to F-7 in 2018.
China ceased production of the F-7 fighter jet (also known as the J-7) in 2013. The last batch of F-7s was delivered to the Bangladesh Air Guard, marking the end of production. While the Chinese military decommissioned the J-7 by the end of 2023, many countries still operate the export variant, the F-7.
The F-7, a Chinese development of the Soviet MiG-21, was produced from 1965 to 2013. It was widely exported, particularly to developing nations, due to its affordability. Since the induction of the F-7, there has been a history of crashes in China, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Egypt.
According to the Chinese Communist Party’s news outlet, Global Times, China retired all J-7s from combat service in the PLA Air Force in 2018.
Poorly trained pilot to blame for the accident
F-7BJI’s canopy blow out indicated that pilot Towkir Islam ejected from the aircraft. Photographs also shows that pilot was tangled into the parachute and sustained severe facial injuries.
Flight Lieutenant Towkir Islam Sagar has just returned from a UN peacekeeping mission and has been absent from all combat training exercises for more than two years. Underprivileged Bangladeshi join the armed forces to make a living. Once an opportunity knocks, the military sends soldiers and officers to UN missions to earn a better salary than the government offers.
UN peacekeeping missions also create one major problem for the Bangladesh military, which is losing specialist skills as pilots and war fighters.
Sagar reportedly completed his first 100 hours of flight training during his cadet years in PT-6 aircraft. He later served with the 15th Squadron, where he logged approximately 60 hours of flight time, before joining the 35th Squadron.
Flight Lieutenant Towkir Islam was flying solo for the first time on Monday after serving 60 hours as a trainee at F-7BJI squadron. Inadequate training and low morale are two reasons Flight Lieutenant Towkir Islam crashed the aircraft. F-7 is Soviet-era fighter jets with no simulators, and having trained on the ground and some orientation with the aircraft does not make anyone competent at war fighting.
The Bangladesh Air Force F-7 BGI training aircraft crashed at school minutes after taking off from AK Khandaker base at Kurmitola around 1:06 pm due to a pilot error, according to the ISPR Bangladesh.
A Bangladesh Air Force training aircraft crashed into a school in the country’s capital city of Dhaka on Monday, killing at least 20 people and injuring 164 civilians was solely contributed by pilot Flight Lieutenant Md. Toukir Islam, who has been absent from flying activities for two years.
Members of the Bangladesh Army and the fire service start rescue operations after a Bangladesh Air Force F7 aircraft crashed into a building of Milestone College in Dhaka’s Uttara around 1:30 pm on July 21, 2025 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Abdul Goni/Drik/Getty Images
More than 170 people were injured as the F-7 BGI training jet crashed into the Milestone School and College, in the city’s northern Uttara neighborhood.
The pilot, named as Flight Lieutenant Md. Towkir Islam, was among those killed as the plane hit a two-storey building, said the country’s military in a statement.
The jet had taken off from Dhaka’s AK Khandker Air Force Base for a training flight shortly after 1 p.m. local time, but crashed minutes later due to a mechanical fault, said the statement from the Inter-Services Public Relations Directorate (ISPR). The pilot had attempted to steer the aircraft away from densely populated areas, it added.
The F-7 BGI is an upgraded version of the F-7, an iteration of the Chinese-designed J-7, which is modelled on the Soviet-era MiG-21.
“It’s a relatively new version of a very old plane,” said Jacob Parakilas, research leader for Defense Strategy, Policy and Capabilities at the European branch of the RAND think tank.
The last F-7 BGI came off the line in 2013, Parakilas told Global Defense Corp. The F-7 was designed as an interceptor aircraft, “which in general means that it’s optimized for high speed flight,” Parakilas said. But take-off and landing can be “less forgiving” than for aircraft with larger wings, he added.
“The fact that the base model is old doesn’t inherently make it unsafe,” Parakilas added.
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