TAIPEI, Taiwan — Captain Hsin Po-yi (辛柏毅) did everything right. He recognized he was disoriented. He reported it. He announced his intention to eject — three times. Yet Taiwan's Air Force (空軍) cannot confirm he escaped his F-16V before it crashed into waters off the island's east coast Tuesday night, and 12 hours of searching have yielded nothing.
Hsin, 29, radioed his intention to eject at 2,600 feet before radar contact was lost at just 170 feet above the sea, but authorities said they have received no signal from his emergency beacon. "We received the call — 'eject, eject, eject,'" Air Force Inspector General Maj. Gen. Chiang Yi-cheng (江義誠) told reporters Wednesday. "Usually, once a pilot says those words, they jump."
But after the call, the Air Force received no signal from survival equipment. "We have no confirmed evidence that he ejected," he continued. Without that signal, authorities cannot determine whether he successfully escaped the doomed aircraft. The crash site lies where the seafloor drops steeply into the Philippine Sea.
Chiang told reporters at the Wednesday morning press conference that Hsin reported a malfunction in his Modular Mission Computer, or MMC, during the return leg of a routine night training mission. "During last night's training, there were reports that the MMC did malfunction," he said. "We checked the records in detail yesterday. But he did not report which specific devices had failed." The MMC serves as the aircraft's central brain, integrating navigation, radar and attitude display information that pilots rely upon to orient themselves.
Col. Chou Ming-ching (周明慶), commander of the 27th Operations Squadron (第27作戰隊), said the computer failure was severe enough that Hsin's flight path display had stopped working entirely, leaving him unable to reference his aircraft's attitude while flying through clouds at night. Chou, visibly emotional during the briefing, said the F-16 has "four killers" — mid-air collision, G-force-induced loss of consciousness, spatial disorientation, and controlled flight into terrain — with night missions most susceptible to the latter two.
"He knew he was experiencing spatial disorientation and he reported it," Chou said. "He checked his altimeter and saw he was descending. A pilot's last resort is to eject. He did everything he was supposed to do." Spatial disorientation is a leading cause of military aviation fatalities worldwide, particularly during night operations over water where pilots lack visual reference points.
The Air Force timeline shows Hsin's situation deteriorated in under two minutes. Flying as wingman in a two-ship formation, he radioed "TULOS" — indicating lost contact with his lead aircraft — at 7:27:30 p.m. at 7,600 feet. At 7:28:18 p.m., passing 4,000 feet, he reported his altitude was "continuously descending." At 7:28:22 p.m., at 2,600 feet, he announced he would eject. The radar blip vanished at 7:29:30 p.m. at 170 feet.
Search and rescue operations began within minutes, with the military dispatching 13 aircraft sorties and 11 naval vessels, including a Keelung-class destroyer. President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) directed all agencies to prioritize the pilot's recovery, and Defense Minister Wellington Koo (顧立雄) traveled to Air Force Command to oversee operations.
An additional 119 ground personnel searched the coastline overnight. Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said Coast Guard crews found nothing. "We hope improved visibility during daylight will help locate him," she wrote on Facebook. Chiang said operations would continue beyond the standard 72-hour search window typically applied during winter months.
Weather conditions have complicated the effort. The Air Force reported sea temperatures of about 24.1 degrees Celsius (75.4 degrees Fahrenheit) with Beaufort scale 5-6 winds (29-49 km/h) and 0.9-meter waves at the time of the crash, though field reports indicated waves later grew to 2-3 meters as a cold air mass moved through. Chang Kuan-cheng (張冠正), a Hualien diving instructor, warned that a person without a wetsuit would begin shivering within two hours in such conditions, the Liberty Times reported.
Questions about Fleet Reliability
The crash has renewed scrutiny of the F-16V fleet's reliability. This is the 11th F-16 Taiwan has lost since the fleet entered service 28 years ago. Anonymous posts on a military-focused social media platform alleged that MMC systems have become less stable since the aircraft underwent upgrades, with increased failure rates and unexpected flight anomalies.
Lt. Col. Ting Wei-hsuan (丁尉軒), logistics division chief for the 5th Tactical Mixed Wing, said the Air Force was investigating. "We will continue investigating yesterday's MMC malfunction," he said. "So far, we have received information that only aircraft number 6700 had the issue." The Air Force said aircraft No. 6700 had no MMC failures recorded in the past six months and that fault data from all jets is routinely sent to the United States for analysis.
Ting added that the service was pressing for American assistance: "Regarding the MMC malfunctions on each aircraft, the Air Force will ... push the U.S. side to speed up software fixes." However, the Air Force acknowledged that while Hsin reported an MMC failure, maintenance records do not indicate the severity grade — information that could prove critical to understanding what happened. The service has suspended all F-16 "Tian An No. 2" training operations pending enhanced inspections and ordered additional pilot training on spatial disorientation procedures.
Hsin had returned to Taiwan just five days earlier from a honeymoon in Finland with his wife, a staff sergeant also stationed at Hualien Air Base (花蓮空軍基地). The couple married in May 2025, but heavy training schedules had delayed the trip for months. Tuesday morning, he flew a dual-seat sortie with an instructor — everything normal. The night mission was his first solo flight since coming back. His wife told officials the trip to Finland had been her lifelong dream. ◼