The military has found and retrieved the flight data recorder of an F-16V jet that disappeared off eastern Taiwan in January and is to send it to its manufacturer in the US to decode the data.
Air Force Command Headquarters in a statement yesterday said that the salvage company responsible for the mission successfully retrieved the flight data recorder, better known as the black box, in waters off Taiwan on Monday.
The air force did not disclose the exact location where the black box was found, but it said the device had been moved ashore and would be sent for decoding to determine the cause of the plane’s disappearance.
Photo: Taipei Times
The single-seat fighter jet, tail number 6700, piloted by Captain Hsin Po-yi (辛柏毅), went missing on Jan. 6 after taking off from Hualien Air Base at 6:17pm on a nighttime training mission and heading south.
Hsin soon reported that the aircraft was losing altitude, the air force said.
Hsin at 7:28pm reported that he was about to eject from the aircraft. Eight seconds later, the jet’s signal disappeared from radar while it was flying off the coast of Fengbin (豐濱) in Hualien County, the air force said.
The air force subsequently set up an emergency response center, and launched a search-and-rescue operation, but it has not been able to find Hsin.
It has since speculated that there might have been a malfunction in the aircraft’s main onboard computer, but an investigation to pinpoint the cause continues.
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