(Reuters) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
SEOUL, April 23 – South Korea’s air force apologised on Thursday for a 2021 mid-air collision involving two fighter jets, a day \u200bafter auditors said pilots were taking selfies and filming \u200cduring the flight and held them responsible for the accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We sincerely apologise to the public for the concern caused by the accident that occurred \u200bin 2021,” an air force spokesman said in a \u200bpress briefing, adding that one of the pilots involved \u2060had been suspended from flying duties, received severe disciplinary action \u200band has since left the military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The apology followed a report released \u200bon Wednesday by the state Board of Audit and Inspection, which found that unplanned manoeuvres for personal filming led to the collision between two F-15K \u200bjets during a formation flight near the city of Daegu \u200bin December 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Auditors said a wingman pilot attempted to record images to \u200cmark \u2060his final flight with the unit, sharply climbing and banking the aircraft without clearance to improve the camera angle while another pilot filmed video from the lead jet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the aircraft closed in, \u200bboth crews attempted \u200bevasive action, \u2060but the wingman’s tail struck the lead jet’s wing, causing about 880 million won ($600,000) in damage. \u200bNo one was injured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The audit board held the \u200bwingman pilot \u2060primarily responsible, but also criticised the air force for lax controls on in-flight filming at the time, ordering the pilot to repay \u2060about \u200ba tenth of the repair costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u200bair force said it was taking steps to tighten flight safety rules and prevent \u200ba repeat of the incident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Reuters) SEOUL, April 23 – South Korea’s air force apologised on Thursday for a 2021 mid-air collision involving two fighter jets, a day \u200bafter auditors said pilots were taking selfies and filming \u200cduring the flight and held them responsible for the accident. “We sincerely apologise to the public for the concern caused by the accident that occurred \u200bin 2021,” an air force spokesman said in a \u200bpress briefing, adding that one of the pilots involved \u2060had been suspended from flying duties, received severe disciplinary action \u200band has since left the military. The apology followed a report released \u200bon Wednesday by… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56947,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56948,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56946\/revisions\/56948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}