Authorities reported that while rescuers were looking for another plane that went missing the day before with six passengers on board, two Philippine air force pilots were killed in a crash on Wednesday.
According to Bataan province’s Police Chief Colonel Romell Velasco, a military SF260 Marchetti plane crash-landed onto a rice field in Pilar town, close to Manila, while in training, killing the pilot and another pilot.
“It’s a total wreck. The wings were separated,” Velasco said after visiting the crash site.
“No one could survive this,” he said, adding that the bodies have been recovered.
According to Colonel Consuelo Castillo, a spokesperson for the air force, an inquiry is being conducted to discover what caused the “mishap.”
After an S-70i helicopter crashed during nighttime training in June 2021, killing everyone on board, the military temporarily grounded the entire Black Hawk fleet.
The Philippines’ civil aviation authority reported that on Tuesday, a Cessna aircraft in the country’s mountainous north failed to arrive at a remote airport while carrying a pilot and five passengers.
According to Eric Apolonio, a spokesman for the organization in charge of regulating the sector, the missing aircraft took off from Cauayan airport on a path that would have required it to cross the Sierra Madre mountain range.
He stated in a statement that after the plane failed to communicate for 30 minutes after it was meant to land, air traffic controllers began a “communication search.”
On Wednesday, bad weather forced the temporary suspension of the search and rescue effort.
