Defense ministry identifies cause of September air crash
ROC Central News Agency
2012/02/07 20:15:08
By Elaine Hou
Taipei, Feb. 7 (CNA) The failure of pilots to remain alert to the terrain they were flying over was behind the crashes of two military aircraft in northeastern Taiwan last September, the defense ministry said Tuesday in a preliminary report on the accident.
Ministry of National Defense spokesman Luo Shou-he said officials of the Civil Aeronautics Administration and the Aviation Safety Council and academics in the field reviewed the report and agreed that the "pilots' loss of situational awareness of the terrain" caused the crashes.
The two aircraft, an F-5F twin-seater fighter and RF-5E reconnaissance plane, crashed in separate incidents in the mountains of Yilan County during a nighttime training mission on Sept. 13, 2011.
The three pilots on the two planes all died.
In the wake of the accident, the ministry took a series of measures to strengthen aviation security, including indicating flight plans and adding the elevations of various geographic landmarks in Taiwan to ground radar monitors at command centers to better guide pilots, Luo said.
The Control Yuan, Taiwan's government watchdog agency, has also launched an investigation into the air crashes, Luo added.
Asked whether the ministry will punish military personnel who are found to be responsible for the accidents, Luo said it will wait for the Control Yuan report before taking further action.
As for the mid-air collision of two AT-3 trainer planes in southern Taiwan on Feb. 3, Luo said the ministry has set up a task force to look into the accident.
No one was seriously hurt in the crash, as the two pilots on one of the aircraft parachuted to safety and the other two managed to fly their plane back to the air base in Kaohsiung.
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