Just days after announcing that it would ground its fleet of F-16V fighters following the loss of one aircraft in an accident, the Taiwan Air Force stated that it has now completed exhaustive safety inspections to verify the aircraft’s airworthiness, after which operations were resumed as normal. In addition to these technical inspection efforts, the service also indicated that its combat pilots and maintenance personnel have successfully completed an additional training program focused on response protocols for potential technical failures, particularly under nighttime operating conditions.
Providing further details, the Taiwan Air Force even released photographs showing a group of four F-16V fighters preparing for takeoff, demonstrating that the fleet is once again fully operational. Moreover, as a sign of confidence in the inspection work, it was reported that Major General Hu Chung-hua, commander of the 5th Tactical Composite Wing, personally flew one of the aircraft departing from Hualien County.
It is useful to recall that all Taiwanese F-16V aircraft were subjected to this process after a single-seat variant was lost last Tuesday while flown by Captain Hsin Po-yi, tail number 6700. As previously reported on January 7, the pilot took off from Hualien Air Base at 6:17 p.m. to conduct a nighttime training mission, reporting just over an hour later that he was about to eject due to an aircraft malfunction and the rapid loss of altitude resulting from it.
Following these events, the Taiwanese Armed Forces quickly deployed a search-and-rescue operation to recover the pilot, involving more than 11 vessels, 13 aircraft, and nearly 300 personnel conducting coastal sweeps using ground vehicles. However, both the F-16V and its pilot remain unaccounted for, with rescue teams’ outlook worsening as the days pass.
The most recent development on the matter, announced yesterday by Defense Minister Wellington Koo, was that intermittent signals emitted by the aircraft’s flight data recorder—also known as the “black box”—were briefly detected. Nevertheless, local reports indicate that heavy seas in the area have prevented its precise localization, as well as the deployment of rescue vessels to narrow the search area and identify the crash site.
*Image credits: @MoNDefense on X
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