Four dead as South Korean air force planes collide in mid-air

Two planes came together before hitting mountain during training exercise

A South Korean Air Force KT-1 aircraft of the type lost in Friday's two-plane crash. AP

Two South Korean Air Force planes collided in mid-air and crashed into a mountain, killing all four people on board.

The crash happened during a training exercise on Friday in the south-eastern city of Sacheon.

Both planes were KT-1 trainer aircraft — South Korea’s first home-developed planes.

They took off from an air force base in Sacheon one after another for flight training, the air force said.

The collision occurred about five minutes after the first aircraft took off and about 6km south of the Sacheon base.

Two people, a trainer pilot and an instructor, were aboard each of the two KT-1 aircraft. All four ejected from the planes but were later found dead, the air force said. The four victims were identified as two first lieutenants and their instructors, both civilian employees of the air force.

The air force said it would launch a task force to investigate what caused the collision.

The crashes caused no civilian casualties on the ground. The air force said it was trying to determine if any civilian property was damaged.

Lee Seong-gyeong, a Sacheon police official, said a car was destroyed after being hit by wreckage but said officials were not immediately aware of any other notable damage to civilian property. South Korean media published photos of the mangled vehicle surrounded by scattered machinery parts that were apparently from the planes.

Debris from one of the crashed South Korean Air Force KT-1 planes on a mountain in Sacheon. EPA

Local emergency officials earlier said three bodies had been found in a mountainous area and a field in Sacheon. They said they believed the planes had crashed into a mountain after flames were seen there.

Officials said three helicopters, 20 vehicles and dozens of emergency workers were sent to the presumed crash sites. They said a number of military personnel were also sent there.

Friday’s incident came after an air force pilot died in January after his F-5E fighter jet crashed near Seoul, in an incident that prompted calls for the country to swiftly retire those planes, which had been in operation since the 1970s. The crash was caused by a damaged pipe that caused fuel to leak into the engine, which caught fire during take-off. South Korea reportedly operates around 80F-5E and plans to retire them in phases by 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 trainer pilot.

Air force plane crashes and other military-related accidents occasionally occur in South Korea, which maintains a 560,000-member military to deter potential aggression from rival North Korea, which has about 1.3 million soldiers, one of the largest militaries in the world.

About 28,500 American troops are stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.