Two air force pilots whose AT-3 training aircraft crashed in mountains in central Taiwan last week died from a frontal impact crash at high speed, the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office said on Monday.
The office said a coroner’s report released on Monday afternoon showed that the bodies of 32-year-old Major Wang Ching-chun (王勁鈞) and 23-year-old First Lieutenant Huang Chun-jung (黃俊榮), who were piloting the plane, did not exhibit any toxic or drug reactions during the incident, the report said.
In addition, no carbon particles were found in their trachea, indicating that they died instantly upon impact rather than from smoke inhalation, the report said.
The coroners said the two pilots died immediately from the frontal impact of their aircraft crashing nose-first into a mountain.
The AT-3 took off from an air force base in Kaohsiung at 11:55am on Sept. 22 and lost contact with air traffic controllers 30 minutes later, the air force said.
The plane, which had been in service for about 27 years, disappeared from radar screens in the skies over Nantou County, it said.
Wang was in the front seat of the plane and Huang was in the back during the routine training flight. Both of them were found dead in the cabin on Saturday, the air force said.
Wang, who had clocked 1,489 flight hours, was a flight instructor at Kaohsiung’s Air Force Academy, while Huang had 116 hours of flying experience.
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires
RSS