Air Force Plane Again Crashes And Kills Pilot, Taiwan President Firmly Orders Investigation

An illustration of a Taiwanese Air Force AT-3 jet trainer. (Wikimedia Commons/Toshiro Aoki)

JAKARTA - Taiwan's Air Force has returned to mourning after a training plane crashed and killed the pilot on Tuesday, the second fatal crash since the start of the year.

The Defense Ministry said an AT-3 jet trainer crashed during a training mission from Gangshan Air Base in the southern city of Kaohsiung. The plane's pilot's body was found.

The AT-3 is an advanced trainer aircraft developed in Taiwan. This type of aircraft first flew into the sky in 1980 and can carry weapons.

President Tsai Ing-wen, who learned of this, was deeply saddened by what had happened, instructing the Ministry of Defense to investigate what happened.

In March, a Mirage 2000 fighter jet crashed into the sea off the island's southeast coast, the second fighter plane to be lost in three months. Luckily, the pilot was saved alive.

Earlier in January, the Air Force suspended combat training for its F-16 fleet, after a recently upgraded fighter model crashed into the sea, killing the pilot.

Last year, two F-5E fighters, which first entered service in Taiwan in the 1970s, crashed into the sea after the two allegedly collided mid-air during a training mission.

In late 2020, an F-16 fighter jet disappeared shortly after taking off from Hualien airbase on Taiwan's east coast on a routine training mission.

Although the Taiwanese Air Force is well-trained, its fleet is required to always be on high alert to anticipate Chinese military aircraft, even if the accident is not linked to an intercept.

China, which claims Taiwan as its own, regularly sends planes into the Taiwan air defense zone (ADIZ), mostly in the area around the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands, but sometimes also into the airspace between Taiwan and the Philippines.