Age no barrier for India's high-flying president

India's 74-year-old president swapped her trademark sari for a military jumpsuit on Wednesday as she took off in a supersonic Sukhoi-30 fighter jet.

Pratibha Patil climbed gingerly aboard a Russian-built Sukhoi MKI-30 aircraft at a western Indian airfield before giving a wave from the cockpit and taking off for a 30-minute sortie.

Indian Air Force spokesman T.K. Singha said the president was flown by an air force pilot at a comfortable cruising speed in the twin-engined jet which can travel three times the speed of sound.

"No aerobatics," he told AFP by telephone from the airbase on the outskirts of Nasik city.

The president, the supreme commander of India's armed forces, had been preparing for a month for the spin and was earlier this month declared medically fit to fly.

Patil's predecessor, then 74-year-old Abdul Kalam, known as the architect of India's nuclear-capable missiles, flew in the supersonic jet in 2006.

The 30-minute presidential joyride came barely two days after Defence Minister A.K. Antony conceded in parliament the technology-starved air force lost 36 aircraft and seven helicopters in separate accidents since 2006.

India's mainstay MiG-21 aircraft have earned sobriquets such as "Flying Coffins" and "Widow Makers" because of the poor safety record of the obsolete Russian-built fighter jets.

The Indian air force recently drew flak from women activists after it suggested it might allow female pilots to fly fighter jets but only if they promised not to have babies.