An F-16 fighter jet went missing on Tuesday night in waters off eastern Taiwan. The defense ministry said it is still searching for the plane.
The ministry said the F-16 disappeared from radar screens at 6:07 pm, just two minutes after taking off from the base. At the time, it was nine nautical miles northeast of Hualien Air Base conducting a nighttime training exercise.
The pilot of the single-seat F-16 jet was Colonel Chiang Cheng-chih. Chiang, 44, has an accumulated flying time of 2,230 hours.
Hsieh Jih-Sheng, commander of the 5th Tactical Fighter Wing of Taiwan's Air Force, said on Tuesday that when the incident occurred, cloud cover was thin at 2,000 feet but thicker from 4,000-7,000 feet. He said night training is part of scheduled drills and not an added element. He asked the public to pray for Chiang's safety.
The accumulated flying time of the F-16 was 2,861 hours. Its latest maintenance work was performed from Aug. 23-Sept. 19. Since then, it had flown about 52 hours in 52 missions.
There have been seven major accidents involving F-16s in Taiwan since 1997. The seven incidents happened in 1998, 1999, 2008, 2013 and 2018. Two pilots died in the accidents and one was injured. The other five were missing and presumed dead.
A Taiwanese pilot also died in a F-16 crash during a training mission near Luke Air Force Base in the American state of Arizona on Jan. 22, 2016.
The National Rescue Command Center (NRCC) said that a Black Hawk chopper and coast guard vessels have been dispatched to the area to locate the aircraft and its pilot.