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Taiwan has high rate of trainer plane crashes: official

ROC Central News Agency

2010/12/27 19:48:16

Taipei, Dec. 27 (CNA) The incidence of crashes involving T-34 Mentor airplanes during regular training missions is "relatively higher" in Taiwan compared with other countries, Air Force Chief of Staff Wang Cheng-hsiao said Monday.

Wang made the remarks while answering a question by Legislator Chen Ying of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party at a hearing of the legislative Foreign and National Defense Committee.

Noting that in the past two decades, Taiwan recorded a total of eight accidents involving T-34 airplanes used for air force pilot training, Chen asked what was the cause of the high rate of crashes.

In response, Wang agreed that the number of the T-34 crashes in Taiwan was indeed higher than in other countries, but he did not pinpoint a reason for the high rate.

He said the Air Force's fleet of T-34 pilot trainers has been grounded for safety checks since the most recent crash in a southern Taiwan mountain area on Dec. 15, in which a flight instructor and an Air Force Academy cadet were killed.

It was the second crash this year involving a T-34 trainer plane. In January, an aircraft of the same model went down during a training flight in southern Taiwan, killing the two pilots aboard.

Wang said the investigation into the January crash is still in progress.

The T-34 Mentor that crashed in December was the eighth to go down since the U.S.-made trainer was introduced in Taiwan in 1985.

Wang said that the T-34 Mentor that went down in January had a lifespan of 16,000 hours, and the one that crashed less than two weeks ago had a lifespan that would have lasted until 2031.

Meanwhile, Deputy Defense Minister Chao Shih-chang told reporters on the sidelines of the legislative hearing that more than 20 other countries around the world also use the T-34 Mentor for air force pilot training.

In Taiwan's Air Force Academy, the oldest T-34 has only 8,000 hours of flying time, and the one that went down recently had only 7,600 hours, he said.

The cause of the most recent crash is being investigated, he said. (By Emmanuelle Tzeng and Elizabeth Hsu) enditem /pc