A group of six Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter pilots were awarded their graduation medals by Prince Charles at a ceremony here after they completed a year-long course in learning to fly the British-made Hawk Advanced Jet Trainer.

"This is a very special day for Valley," said Prince Charles, the heir apparent to the British throne, at the graduation ceremony held Monday at Royal Air Force (RAF) Valley, the RAF's advanced tactics and training unit located on a remote Welsh island.

"This unique training scheme has been a huge success and the Indian pilots should be justly proud of their achievements," Prince Charles said, adding, "They leave behind many friends".

He said the Indian pilots deserved to be congratulated for completing the course, which involved "immensely hard work".

The occasion was particularly special, he added, "because I have a particular fondness for India".

The six Indians make up the first batch in a training programme that is to run for three years, under which a total of 75 IAF pilots are to be trained. They in turn will train other Indian pilots to fly the Hawk in Hyderabad.

IAF Flying Officers Jai Singh Brar, Manoj Garg, Rohit Kataria, Saurabh Pachauri, Vinod Prabhakaran and Anand Kumar Singh all spoke highly of the learning experience in Britain.

The graduation marks the first positive outcome of a long-running saga over the Hawk jets and India. In the face of some hectic lobbying by Britain, Czechoslovakia, the US and Russia, New Delhi kept bidders at bay for 18 years before deciding upon the Hawk.

India signed a contract in March 2004 for the purchase of 66 Hawk Mark-132 aircraft.

Although the deal on paper is worth about 800 million pounds, the overall cost to India is expected to run well over a billion pounds when maintenance and repairs are taken into account.

Air Marshall Subash Bhojwani, who is IAF's head of training, said the Hawk "fits in nicely" in IAF's strategic plans.

"We currently use the [Russian] Mig-21 for training, but it's an old aircraft and not the ideal. This purchase was very necessary."

The first 24 Hawks will be supplied to India beginning 2007 - aircraft that Bhojwani said are "a dozen years in advance of the RAF itself".

The Indians have sought specific high-tech changes in avionics, which will be fitted before the aircraft are delivered.

The remaining 42 will be built by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Bangalore, which Bhojwani called "a major offset to get more jobs and technology transfer".

"Even if the technology is from outside, you can learn a lot," he said, adding India should begin to manufacture its own trainer jets "in due course of time".

"After all, we are manufacturing the LCA (light combat aircraft), the Saras and the Hans. These are totally indigenous."

Dave Corfield, a senior executive at British Aerospace Systems (BAES), the arms company that manufactures Hawks, said he will even consider outsourcing Hawk manufacturing to HAL but that the export licence will have to be renegotiated if HAL wanted to sell these aircraft to third countries.