Warplane pilots could hardly survive in crash off central Vietnam: Lt Gen

April 21, 2015 | 15:49
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The two pilots of two Su-22 fighter jets that disappeared while flying off south-central Vietnam during a training exercise last week could have died on duty, a senior military official has said.

“We are very sorrowful to say that the two pilots – Lieutenant Colonel Le Van Nghia and Captain Nguyen Anh Tu – have almost no chance of survival,” Lieutenant General Vo Van Tuan, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Vietnam People’s Army, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Monday.

The official made the statement after five days of search for the two missing pilots and their warplanes, during which rescue forces have found many broken parts of the planes – including some debris of the cabin of either aircraft.

But no sign of the pilots has been detected so far.

The black boxes of the two Russian-made jets have also yet to be recovered.

Air traffic controllers lost contact with the two airmen around 11:00 am last Thursday, when they were separately piloting the fighter jets over the waters between Ninh Thuan and Binh Thuan Provinces, about 15km north of Binh Thuan’s Phu Quy Island.

Lieutenant General Tuan commented that the two aircraft might have exploded before they crashed into the sea, adding that the Defense Ministry will mobilize all possible resources to search for the missing pilots as well as the black boxes that will help determine the cause of the crash.

When asked whether the two pilots had ejected from their aircraft, the official said evidence for this assumption is now needed.

“The two planes could have collided with each other before they went down. This is the most likely possibility,” the official said.

A source also told Tuoi Tre that the two jets, which took off from the Thanh Son military airport that morning, might have collided head-on with each other during their bombing drills.

Regarding the fact that four military planes have crashed during training for the past year, Lieutenant General Tuan said that the ministry will review all aspects related to flight safety, from personnel issues to flight operation and coordination activities.

According to Lieutenant General Nguyen Van Thanh, political commissar of the Vietnamese Air Defense and Air Force, the two missing pilots are among the skilled airmen of Air Regiment 937, with Lieutenant Colonel Nghia and Captain Tu having over 1,400 and 400 flying hours, respectively.

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