DUBAI: Investigators are examining whether the pilot who died in India’s Tejas fighter jet crash at the Dubai Airshow descended below the mandatory 300-foot minimum altitude for aerobatic manoeuvres or breached any approved flying protocols, aviation officials said on Saturday.

The inquiry is being led jointly by the UAE’s civil aviation authority, the country’s armed forces aviation division, and the Dubai Airshow’s Flying Control Committee (FCC), which is reviewing all available technical data and display-routine documents.

Officials said investigators are analysing radar tracks, flight-path recordings, and high-resolution video footage to determine the jet’s altitude profile and maneuver sequence in the moments before impact.

The FCC is also assessing whether the pilot performed any aerobatic manoeuvres that had not been formally cleared for the show.

A parallel technical investigation is examining whether the aircraft experienced a sudden loss of power, a control-system malfunction, or another mechanical failure that may have prevented recovery.

The Dubai Airshow, held every two years since 1989, had not recorded a fatal flying-display accident until Friday’s crash, which killed the pilot and brought the day’s demonstrations to a halt.

Authorities say no determination will be made until all evidence — including cockpit-related data, maintenance logs, and approved display documentation — has been fully examined.

• Major Indian unions condemn new labour codes as “deceptive fraud”.
• Unions demand withdrawal of labour laws ahead of protests.
• Modi govt rolls out four labour codes approved five years ago.

Ten large Indian trade unions condemned the government’s rollout on Friday of new labour codes, the biggest such overhaul in decades, as a “deceptive fraud” against workers.

The unions, aligned with parties opposing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, demanded in a statement late on Friday that the laws be withdrawn ahead of nationwide protests they plan to hold on Wednesday.

Modi’s government implemented the four labour codes, approved by parliament five years ago, as it seeks to simplify work rules, some dating to British colonial rule, and liberalise conditions for investment. It says the changes improve worker protections.

While the new rules offer social security and minimum-wage benefits, they also allow companies to hire and fire workers more easily.

Unions have strongly opposed the changes, organising multiple nationwide protests over the past five years.

The Labour Ministry did not immediately respond on Saturday to a Reuters request for comment on the union demands. The government has held over a dozen consultations with unions since June 2024, an internal ministry document on the labour codes shows.

The rules allow longer factory shifts and night work for women, while raising the threshold for firms that need prior approval for layoffs to 300 workers from 100, giving companies greater flexibility in workforce management.

Businesses have long criticised India’s work rules as a drag on manufacturing, which contributes less than a fifth to the country’s nearly $4 trillion economy.

But the Association of Indian Entrepreneurs expressed concern that the new rules would significantly increase operating costs for small and midsize enterprises and disrupt business continuity across key sectors. It asked the government for transitional support and flexible implementation mechanisms.

Not all unions oppose the overhaul. The right-wing Bharatiya Majdoor Sangh, aligned with Modi’s party, called on states to implement them after consultations on some of the codes.

Indian states are expected to craft rules aligning with the new federal codes covering wages, industrial relations, social security and occupational safety.

NEW YORK: A self-portrait by celebrated Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold for $54.66 million in New York on Thursday, setting a record for the price of a painting by a woman, the auction house Sotheby’s said.

The sale of Kahlo’s 1940 artwork, titled “El sueno (La cama)” — which translates to “The dream (The bed)” — broke the previous record set by American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, whose 1932 painting “Jimson Weed/White Flower No 1” sold for $44.4 million in 2014.

Kahlo’s painting is “the most valuable work by a woman artist ever sold at auction,” Sotheby’s said in a post on social media platform X.

The artwork depicts Kahlo sleeping in a bed that appears to float through the sky, beneath a skeleton with its legs wrapped in sticks of dynamite.

The work was painted during a pivotal decade in Kahlo’s career, marked by her turbulent relationship with Mexican painter Diego Rivera, the auction house said on X.

The painting went on the auction block with an estimated price range of $40 million to $60 million.

The buyer’s name was not disclosed.

The work is a “very personal” painting, in which Kahlo “merges folkloric motifs from Mexican culture with European surrealism,” Anna Di Stasi, the head of Latin American art at Sotheby’s, told AFP.

The Mexican artist, who died in 1954 at the age of 47, “did not completely agree” with her work being associated with the surrealist movement, Di Stasi said.

However, “given this magnificent iconography, it seems entirely appropriate to include it,” she said.

Kahlo struggled with fragile health throughout her life due to childhood illness, polio and a serious bus accident in 1925, and pain and death were central to her work.

The skeleton depicted in the painting echoed the papier-mache version that hung above Kahlo’s bed, according to Sotheby’s.

Women under-represented

None of the 162 pieces of art that had previously sold for more than $50 million were by women, according to an AFP tally.

Less than 1% of the 468 works sold for more than $30 million are by women artists.

The record-setting sale of Kahlo’s self-portrait came two nights after Sotheby’s made another record sale, with a painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt fetching $236.4 million — the second-most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.

Klimt’s “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer,” which he painted between 1914 and 1916, depicts the daughter of his main patron standing in front of a blue tapestry.

The most expensive painting ever sold at auction remains the “Salvator Mundi,” (Savior of the World), a Renaissance work attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which was bought for $450 million in 2017.

Female artists whose works have fetched the highest sale prices are primarily prominent 20th-century figures.

The third-highest sale price, after O’Keeffe’s White Flower No 1,” was for a huge spider sculpture by French visual artist Louise Bourgeois, which sold for $32.5 million in 2023.

Kahlo’s self-portrait “Diego y yo” (“Diego and I”, 1949) fetched $34.9 million in 2021 and “Portrait of Marjorie Ferry” (1932) by the Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka was sold for $21.2 million in 2020.