Two months after the entire Tejas fleet was grounded following an accident on February 7, the Indian Air Force (IAF) has cleared the fighter jets for flying from tomorrow.Exhaustive checks were ordered and a probe committee, comprising the IAF and public sector plane manufacturer Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), found that a software glitch had caused the accident. The Air Force is left with around 35 single-engine Tejas.A jet had veered off the runway into an adjoining mud-ditch while it was in the process of taking off from a forward base along the western front. The pilot of the single-seater aircraft survived with injuries.Sources said a “correction was required in the plane’s braking software, which had been carried out”.Last week, HAL Chairman and Managing Director DK Sunil had told a group of mediapersons about the “technical solution”. “It was a software issue of the braking system not working on one of the jets,” said Sunil.After the software was corrected and updated, it was tested under varied conditions before the fleet was cleared for flight again, said an official. Modern jets rely heavily on their on-board mission computers for combat and flying. This includes computer-aided firing, targeting, processing of radar signatures and operations. The software upgrade has been done jointly by the IAF and HAL. “A new software code sequence was not needed and it was only an upgrade,” the official said.The exhaustive checks on the fleet included analysing the metallurgy of the under-carriage that holds the wheels, electro-magnetic system used for applying brakes and the software.Tejas maintains one of the world’s best safety records among contemporary fighter aircraft, the HAL had said in a statement after the February 7 accident. It was the third such mishap involving the jet since its induction in 2016.The jet faced its first crash near Jaisalmer in March 2024 when the plane crashed while returning from a firepower demonstration. The pilot had ejected safely. The second crash happened in November 2025 when the jet was involved in an aerobatic display at the Dubai Airshow. Wing Commander Namansh Syal had died in the accident.