Taipei: A Taiwanese jet trainer crashed on Tuesday, killing the pilot, the defence ministry said, the second fatal accident the air force has experienced in 2022.
The ministry said the AT-3 jet crashed during a training mission from the Gangshan air base in the southern city of Kaohsiung and the body of the pilot had already been found.
The AT-3 is a domestically-developed advanced trainer that first flew in 1980 and can carry weapons.
President Tsai Ing-wen is “deeply saddened” by the loss and has instructed the Defence Ministry to investigate what happened, her office added in a statement.
In March, a Mirage 2000 fighter jet crashed into the sea off the island’s southeast coast, the second combat aircraft lost in three months. The pilot was rescued alive.
In January the air force suspended combat training for its F-16 fleet after a recently upgraded model of the fighter jet 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 they apparently collided in mid-air during a training mission.
In late 2020, an F-16 vanished shortly after taking off from the Hualien air base on Taiwan’s east coast on a routine training mission.
Comments are closed.