Airplane Accidents China

A U.S. Navy spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet collided Sunday over the South China Sea, causing the American craft to make an emergency landing in China and the Chinese plane to crash, U.S. and Chinese officials said. The 24 crew members aboard the EP-3 U.S. reconnaissance plane were unhurt, but U.S. defense officials said they have been unable to establish contact with the crew since the craft came to ground on Hainan island, a Chinese province off the country's southern coast.

The spy plane incident that severely strained Sino-U.S. relations in April appears to have ended without Washington paying the money Beijing demanded, a U.S. official said. China had sought $1 million and rejected a U.S. offer of $34,576. "We sent them a check for what we thought was reasonable costs, and they didn't accept it. It's been three months," the official said. "It's done." The U.S.

A Russian air cargo company said Saturday that it has been picked to fly a dismantled U.S. Navy spy plane out of China. Leonid Shirobokov, a spokesman for Polyot, told the Interfax and Itar-Tass news agencies that his company had won the contract, which was announced last week by the U.S. Defense Department. He said a Russian Antonov 124-100 will take the EP-3 spy plane from the airfield on the Chinese island of Hainan, but he did not give a date for the operation.

China has rejected an offer by the United States to pay $34,576 in support costs for a crippled Navy spy plane as unacceptable after Beijing demanded $1 million, the official New China News Agency reported Saturday. "The so-called decision is unacceptable to China both in its content and form," Zhang Qiyue, a spokeswoman for China's Foreign Ministry, was quoted by the news agency as saying. U.S.

Chinese officials appear to have no legal basis for detaining crew members or seizing electronic equipment on the U.S. spy plane that landed in southern China after a midair collision, several American experts in international law said Tuesday. Accidents in international air or sea traffic, even those involving military vessels, generally require nations to assist the victims and keep hands off the stricken planes or ships, the experts said.

At least 127 people died Tuesday after the crew of a Chinese jetliner refused a hijacker's demands to be flown elsewhere and attempted to land at Canton airport. As the Boeing 737, carrying 94 passengers and a crew of 10, touched down on the runway, the hijacker and crew were struggling in the cockpit, survivors said. The aircraft careened into two other Chinese planes on the ground, first an empty Boeing 707, then a Boeing 757 loaded with passengers waiting to take off for Shanghai.

A Boeing 737 passenger jet on a domestic flight from Canton crashed Tuesday near the scenic tourist city of Guilin, killing all 141 people on board in the worst recorded air disaster in China's history. Debris from the crash was scattered over a wide area of mountainous terrain, according to initial reports from Guilin. The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.

In his rattling Russian jeep, Peter Hannam was bouncing across the Mongolian steppe 200 miles east of Ulan Bator when he spotted the solitary man astride a white horse descending a distant hill. The rider, sky-blue cloak and orange sash flapping in the bitterly cold wind, was the only sign of humanity on the vast and barren plain. Hannam instructed his driver to leave the dirt track and intersect the rider's path.

U.S. officials in China took possession of a case of human remains believed to be those of two crew members of an American B-24 bomber that crashed in southern China in 1944 during World War II. The remains were handed over in Guilin and then flown to Hawaii for examination, Pentagon spokesman Larry Greer said. The remains were found this summer during a U.S.-China recovery operation on Maoer mountain in Guangxi province.

U.S. and Chinese officials appear to be working hard to prevent nationalistic sentiment on both sides of the Pacific from endangering their economic relations, particularly China's pending membership in the World Trade Organization. These efforts to mitigate the fallout from the tense diplomatic standoff over Sunday's collision of a U.S. spy plane and Chinese jet fighter demonstrate the critical importance the rapidly expanding $100-billion U.S.

The U.S. spy plane that was at the center of a diplomatic standoff between the United States and China arrived at a Georgia air base, where it will be inspected to see if it can be fixed and returned to service. A Russian cargo plane carrying parts of the $80-million EP-3, which had been held in China since April 1, touched down at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta.

The final pieces of an American spy plane that had been stranded for three months in southern China were packed up and flown out Tuesday, wrapping up a tempestuous chapter in Sino-U.S. relations. A chartered Russian cargo plane picked up the remaining sections of the Navy EP-3 from Hainan island and took off for Honolulu, where it arrived about 12 hours later, U.S. military officials said.

American technicians have made progress in dismantling a crippled Navy surveillance plane and have removed its tail cone in preparation for flying the aircraft home from China's Hainan island, according to U.S. contractors. The aircraft has been stranded on Hainan since it made an emergency landing there April 1 after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea. Photographs released by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co.

A Russian air cargo company said Saturday that it has been picked to fly a dismantled U.S. Navy spy plane out of China. Leonid Shirobokov, a spokesman for Polyot, told the Interfax and Itar-Tass news agencies that his company had won the contract, which was announced last week by the U.S. Defense Department. He said a Russian Antonov 124-100 will take the EP-3 spy plane from the airfield on the Chinese island of Hainan, but he did not give a date for the operation.

China and the United States have wrapped up an agreement on the return of an American spy plane stuck for more than two months on southern Hainan island, bringing to an end one of the worst confrontations to bedevil the two countries in recent years. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi told reporters Thursday that negotiations had concluded on dismantling the Navy EP-3 and sending it home. Four technicians from the U.S.

The Bush administration has agreed to dismantle a damaged U.S. spy plane and ship it home from China on a chartered Russian cargo jet, abandoning its hopes of flying the EP-3 back to the United States, officials said Tuesday. "We have agreed now in principle that an Antonov-124 aircraft can be used to remove our EP-3 aircraft from Lingshui air field on Hainan island," State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker said.

As the Bush administration scrambles to prevent its first foreign policy emergency from escalating into a crisis, its biggest adversary may be the clock. With each passing hour, the ability of Washington and Beijing to end their standoff over the crippled American surveillance plane and its 24-member crew without rupturing future U.S.-China relations becomes more difficult, foreign policy analysts and former U.S. officials said Tuesday.

With the 24 crew members of a U.S. spy plane safely back on American soil and being debriefed, the Bush administration Friday adopted a much harder line toward China, asserting that a reckless Chinese pilot caused the midair collision and dismissing Beijing's version of the incident as propaganda. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a former Navy fighter pilot, told a news conference that the Chinese F-8 fighter pilot was solely responsible for the accident.

China has reached an agreement with the United States to have a stranded American spy plane disassembled and shipped home, a Chinese official said Thursday. But U.S. officials quickly asserted that there was no done deal. "The United States has submitted a proposal to take apart the plane and take it back," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao told reporters here. "The Chinese side has agreed to that." In Washington, however, Bush administration officials said the U.S.

The damaged U.S. spy plane that made an emergency landing in China last month probably will not be able to fly home and will have to be shipped out in crates, Vice President Dick Cheney said. "The airplane will be returned; there have been negotiations underway," Cheney said on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press." "My guess is it may well have to be crated out, partly because it's in bad shape."