SEOUL, April 1 (BNA) Two South Korean Air Force planes collided in the air during a training exercise and crashed near their base Friday, killing all four on board, officials said.
The Air Force said in a statement that both planes were KT-1 trainer aircraft – South Korea’s first indigenously developed aircraft – which took off from an air base in the southeastern city of Sachon one by one for flight training.
The Air Force said the collision occurred about five minutes after the first plane took off and about six kilometers (3.7 miles) south of Satchon Air Force Base.
There were two people – a trained pilot and an instructor – on board each of the two KT-1s. The Air Force statement said that the four were expelled from the planes, but were later found dead. The four victims have been identified as lieutenants and their instructors, both of whom are civilian employees of the Air Force.
The Air Force said it would form a task force to investigate the cause of the collision.
The Air Force said the crash did not result in any civilian casualties on the ground and is trying to determine if any civilian property was damaged.
Lee Seong-jeong, a Sacheon police official, said a passenger car was destroyed after hitting a wreck, but added that officials were not immediately aware of any other noticeable damage to civilian property. South Korean media published pictures of the stricken vehicle surrounded by scattered mechanical parts, apparently from aircraft.
Local emergency officials said earlier that three bodies were found in a mountainous area and an agricultural field in Sachon. They said they believed the planes hit a mountain because a fire had started there.
Local officials said three helicopters, 20 vehicles and dozens of emergency workers were dispatched to the presumed crash sites. They added that a number of soldiers were sent there.
Friday’s incident comes after an Air Force pilot was killed in January after his F-5E fighter jet crashed near Seoul, in an incident that prompted the country to recall those planes that have been operating quickly since the 1970s. The Air Force said after investigating the accident last month that a damaged tube had caused fuel to leak into the engine, which caught fire during takeoff. South Korea is said to operate about 80 F-5E aircraft and plans to phased retirement until 2030.
The KT-1 has been used by the country’s Air Force since 2000. Sacheon was the site of another KT-1 crash in November 2003 that killed a trained pilot.
Air Force plane crashes and other military-related incidents sometimes occur in South Korea, which maintains a 560,000-strong army to deter potential aggression from rival North Korea, which has about 1.3 million soldiers and is one of the world’s largest.
About 28,500 US troops are stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.