Philippine fighter jet wreckage, bodies of crew found

MANILA - Philippine rescuers found the wreckage of a missing FA-50 fighter jet and the bodies of its two crew members on March 5 in a mountainous region of the country’s south.

The jet had gone missing a day earlier

while on a mission to provide air support for troops fighting communist rebels in northern Mindanao.

Lieutenant-General Luis Rex Bergante, commander of Eastern Mindanao Command, told AFP the two aircrew members had been found inside the wreckage.

“The bodies were found inside the aircraft. There was an attempt to open a parachute and eject. The aircraft was a total wreck. The aircraft smashed through the trees in the mountain,” he said.

Lieutenant-Colonel Francisco Garello of the 4th Infantry Division told AFP the wreckage of the missing fighter jet was found on Mount Kalatungan.

Located in Mindanao’s Bukidnon province, the 2,880m-high Kalatungan is the fifth-tallest mountain in the Philippines.

Lt-Gen Bergante said bringing the servicemen’s remains down the mountain was the top priority.

The cause of the crash is under investigation, he added.

In a statement, the air force said it had temporarily “grounded its FA-50 fleet” and would “ensure a thorough investigation into the accident”, the cause of which remains unknown.

The crashed jet was one of a dozen FA-50s the Philippines purchased from South Korea in the past decade.

Dangerous terrain

Lt-Col Garello said earlier on March 5 that the search had been suspended overnight due to the danger of “communist groups” believed to be operating in the area.

He said on March 4 that his division had called in air support during a firefight with the New People’s Army, a long-running Maoist insurgency now believed to have fewer than 2,000 fighters.

The fighters flew out of Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base, which shares a runway with the airport in Cebu, the Philippines’ second-largest city.

The Philippine Air Force said on the evening of March 4 that it was too early to determine if the plane had crashed or managed to make an emergency landing.

A spokeswoman for the air force, Colonel Consuelo Castillo, told reporters on March 5 that this was the “first major incident involving” its squadron of FA-50s, which had been used in exercises over the disputed South China Sea.

The FA-50s have been flown in joint air patrols with treaty ally the US over contested areas of the South China Sea, where China and the Philippines have been involved in increasingly tense confrontations.

On March 5, Col Castillo said the air force hoped the investigation would be “done thoroughly but swift enough for us not to sacrifice our operational readiness”, given the fighters’ key role in maritime patrols.

She also said the air force has proposed purchasing 12 more FA-50s, a request under consideration at the Department of National Defence.

There have been a number of deadly crashes involving Philippine military aircraft in recent years.

Two navy pilots were killed in April 2024 when their Robinson R22 helicopter crashed near a market south of Manila during a training flight.

In January 2023, two air force pilots were killed when their Marchetti SF260 turboprop plane crashed into a rice field. AFP