The Control Yuan yesterday censured the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) and the Air Force Command for their roles in a deadly F-16 crash in New Taipei City in 2018, and ordered them to make improvements.
The Control Yuan said in a statement that the decision was based on the conclusions of an investigative report approved on Thursday last week by its Committee on National Defense and Intelligence Affairs, which probed the accident that occurred in Rueifang District (瑞芳) on June 4, 2018.
Half an hour after taking off from Hualien Air Base to take part in a major annual drill, pilot Wu Yen-ting’s (吳彥霆) single-seat F-16 jet crashed into Wufenshan (五分山), killing him, apparently due to “human error” by air force and civilian flight controllers, the report said.
The Control Yuan blamed the crash on negligence and lack of discipline at the Air Operations Center of the Air Force Command, after finding that five of the officers involved were not fully prepared for the mission and did not carry out the mission based on standard procedures due to a lack of training.
Citing the report, the Control Yuan said the accident occurred after personnel at the center instructed Wu to veer off his original course after he was already airborne, which is against standard procedure.
The center also ordered the pilot to maintain an altitude of 2,000 feet (609.6m) even though he reported heavy clouds, instead of having the jet climb to a safe altitude, in part because center personnel were not properly trained in using a ground proximity warning system, the Control Yuan said.
The control tower at Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport), which is supervised by the CAA, was also censured by the Control Yuan for failing to observe air traffic management procedures, as the military drill required close coordination between civilian and military air traffic controllers.
The Songshan control tower should have given priority to the F-16 as it approached Keelung on Taiwan’s northeastern coast, the report said.
However, the tower had entered the wrong coordinates for its flight control area that day and directed the jet based on that inaccurate information, it said.
It also did not give priority “air traffic service” to the F-16 as required by standard procedure, the report said.
Instead, it asked the center to have the F-16 veer east, although it allowed the plane to climb above 2,000 feet.
Knowing that a passenger aircraft was about to take off from Songshan airport, the center ordered the F-16 to maintain its altitude.
By the time the commercial aircraft had passed Keelung and the center asked the F-16 to increase its altitude, it was too late, the Control Yuan said.
The findings indicate that the center and the Songshan control tower were both responsible for the crash, and need to make improvements to address the problems, the Control Yuan said.
The censure came days after the Control Yuan on Wednesday last week impeached five Air Operations Center officers — Shih Ching-nien (史青年), Lai Wen-sheng (賴文生), Lu I-shun (盧易舜), Chuang Chun-yuan (莊春源) and Ou Chien-fei (區劍飛) — who were found to be primarily responsible for the accident.
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