A Taiwanese news website has identified the pilot who was killed after an F-16 jet crashed in northwestern Arizona on Thursday.
Human remains were found at the crash site where a fighter jet piloted by a student from Taiwan went down, the American military said Thursday night.
Focus Taiwan, aTaiwanese news website, said Friday Maj. Kao Ting-cheng, a pilot in the Republic of China Air Force, was a 2007 graduate from a Taiwanese air force academy who had 865 flight hours of experience.
According to Focus Taiwan, Kao, who has a wife and two children, was unable to properly eject before the fighter jet crashed during a routine training mission.
Kao was the only male child in his family and had dreamed of being a pilot, according to his father Kao Ching-lin who spoke to local media in Taiwan.
According to the news source, Taiwanese officials were being sent to Luke Air Force Base to help with the investigation of the crash, and Kao's relatives were being helped with travel arrangement to the U.S.
Officials from the West Valley air base said Kao was flying solo and engaged in air-to-air combat training with an instructor when his F-16 went down for still unknown reasons.
Brig. Gen. Scott Pleus said the student pilot had been in a training program for the past six months at Luke, which is a major pilot-training base for the Air Force and foreign military services.
The crash occurred at about 8:45 a.m. in rugged terrain about 10 miles southwest of Bagdad in Yavapai County. The crash site, in a sparsely populated area, was located by a helicopter crew about four hours later.
Bagdad is about 85 miles northwest of Luke, which is located in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale.
Pleus said an interim safety board has been formed to conduct a preliminary investigation into the crash.
Recent previous crashes involving F-16s from Luke included one on a training mission in southern New Mexico. That pilot ejected safely.
An instructor pilot and a student pilot also ejected safely in June 2013 after their two-seat F-16 hit several birds during takeoff from Luke. The jet crashed in a farm field. An Air Force investigation report said the instructor pilot was at fault because he made a rapid climbing turn after the bird strike, robbing the plane of airspeed and the ability to recover and return to the base.
In July 2008, an Ohio Air National Guard pilot died when he blacked out and his F-16 crashed in western Arizona. An Air Force investigation board found that the 26-year-old pilot made an improper turn during a dogfighting maneuver in which high gravitational forces came into play.
