The Uttara crash is more than an accident. It is a searing symbol of institutional decay, short-sighted decisions and a nation’s failure to safeguard its future, writes Ziauddin Hyder
On July 21, the unthinkable happened. A Bangladesh Air Force F-7 jet — a relic of Cold War-era military hardware — fell from the sky and slammed into Milestone School and College in Uttara, Dhaka, killing at least 33 people, most of them children. In a single, scorching instant, the dreams of countless families were reduced to smoke and rubble. But beyond the horrifying images lies an even more haunting truth: this was not just an accident. It was a tragedy foretold — a product of systemic neglect, dangerous decisions and staggering indifference.
For years, the Bangladesh Air Force has continued to fly the aging F-7 fleet — Chinese knockoffs of the Soviet MiG-21 — despite warnings from aviation experts, defence analysts and even pilots themselves. Countries like Zimbabwe, Iran and Myanmar have faced similar tragedies, with F-7s crashing due to mechanical failures, cockpit malfunctions and aging airframes. Bangladesh, too, has seen multiple incidents involving these jets, but never on this scale.
Why were these flying coffins still being used for training our brightest young pilots? Why were these manoeuvres permitted over one of the most densely populated areas of the capital? And above all, how did we allow a children’s school to be built directly in the flight path of the nation’s busiest international airport?
These are not rhetorical questions. They demand answers — and accountability.
The location of Milestone School — nestled within the funnel approach to Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport — is a damning indictment of urban planning failure. Who allowed such a densely populated residential and educational zone to grow unchecked under the sky most vulnerable to aviation mishaps? Urban authorities, civil aviation regulators and successive governments bear collective responsibility for ignoring basic safety protocols.
And when disaster struck, the failures only deepened. The initial response was chaotic. Burn victims were loaded onto rickshaws and metro coaches. Emergency medical services were woefully unprepared. At the National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery — one of the country’s flagship hospitals — relatives waited for hours to receive information, supplies or treatment. Foreign doctors from India arrived 48 hours later. Why didn’t we have emergency protocols in place for large-scale burn incidents? Why was our premier burn facility left overwhelmed, under-equipped and under-manned?
The tragedy also revealed a more sinister development: attempts by certain political factions — including remnants of the previous regime — to exploit national grief for their own gain. Within hours, social media platforms were flooded with inflammatory messages, many crafted not to mourn the dead but to destabilise the country. These elements are using a moment of national trauma to further their political agendas — an act as cruel as the tragedy itself.
This is not the time for political point-scoring. It is the time for moral reckoning. We must collectively ask: What kind of country allows its children to die in their classrooms — struck down not by enemies, but by the very institutions meant to protect them?
We must ground the F-7 fleet, permanently. We must immediately relocate flight training missions away from populated zones. We must revise urban zoning regulations to ensure no educational institution or hospital is placed in high-risk aviation corridors. And we must overhaul our emergency response infrastructure — especially for burn victims — so that no family watches their child suffer because help arrived too late.
The Uttara crash is more than an accident. It is a searing symbol of institutional decay, short-sighted decisions and a nation’s failure to safeguard its future. If we do not act now — with urgency and resolve — then we will fail not only the victims of July 21, but every Bangladeshi child who looks up at the sky and dreams.
Let this be the last time the sky falls on our children. Let this be the beginning of accountability. And let this tragedy serve as the turning point where we finally decide: enough.
Ìý
Dr Ziauddin Hyder, a former World Bank senior specialist in health and nutrition, is an adviser to the chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.