Two killed in Philippines air crash, another plane missing

MANILA: TWO Philippine air force aviators were killed in a crash on Wednesday, while rescuers were searching for another plane that went missing the previous day with six people on board, authorities said.

During a training, the military’s SF260 Marcheti plane plummeted onto a rice paddy in Pilar town near Manila, killing the pilot and another aviator, Bataan province’s Police Chief Colonel Romell Velasco told AFP.

“It’s a total wreck. The wings were separated,” Velasco said ater visiting the crash site.

“No one could survive this,” he said, adding that the bodies have been recovered.

An investigation to determine the cause of the “mishap” is under way, air force spokesperson Colonel Consuelo Castillo told reporters.

In June 2021, the military temporarily grounded its entire Black Hawk fleet ater an S-70i helicopter crashed during a night-time training, killing all six on board.

In a separate incident in the country’s mountainous north, a Cessna plane carrying a pilot and five passengers failed to arrive at a remote airstrip on Tuesday, the Philippines’ civil aviation authority said.

The missing plane had taken off from Cauayan airport on a route that would have taken it across the sierra mad re mountain range, said erica pol on io, spokesperson for the industry regulator.

Air traffic controllers initiated a “communication search” ater the plane did not respond half an hour ater it was supposed to land, he said in a statement.

The search and rescue operation was temporarily halted by poor weather on Wednesday, he added.

The air force grounded other SF-260S, which are used for training and in counter-insurgency operations, Castillo said.

An investigation would be done to determine the cause of the crash, the air force said. The Philippine military, one of the most underfunded in Asia, has struggled for years to modernise its air force and navy in particular despite funding problems while batling decades-old Muslim and communist insurgencies and defending Philippine territorial waters and claims in the disputed South China Sea.