China Navy: doomed flight avoided crashing into village

World Today

The Chinese Navy just released a statement saying an instructor and his student died in a Navy aircraft accident on May 13 in Northeast China’s Liaoning Province.

The Chinese Navy revealed the news over a micro-blogging website, saying that the two were killed after failing to engage their parachutes even though they were able to successfully avoid crashing in a densely populated area. The report went into details saying that allegedly after discovering that the aircraft’s engine was on fire shortly after taking off, the two pilots turned the aircraft away from villages, residential buildings, hospitals and a business area, but ended up crash diving into a wooded area.

The crash is said to have happened within a span of about 17 seconds, from the time the two piloting the aircraft observed the fire, until the crash.

There was not enough time or sufficient altitude for the two pilots to deploy their parachutes and escape from the doomed aircraft, according to the Chinese Navy.

The two were named as, instructor Jiang Tao, 27, and student Lu Pengfei, 22. Both were from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy Flight School.

Story compiled with information from Xinhua