Survival of Missing Pilot Unlikely: Aeronautic Expert

There is little chance that missing pilot Wang Wei is still alive now that ten days have passed since the military plane collision incident happened on April 1, a Beijing-based aeronautic expert said here Wednesday.

Liu Feng, an expert with a Beijing-based institute of Chinese air force, said that Wang Wei could have been injured as a result of the bumping by the U.S. spy plane, or that he may have been hurt and lost consciousness during the bail-out when the jet fighter was rolling sideward. In either case he would have likely failed to perform a series of lifesaving actions, including inflating the life raft and getting rid of the parachutes.

Liu explained that since food and desalinating device are kept in the raft, the pilot can hardly hold on for 72 hours if the raft is lost. Even if the food and desalinater are there, normally they can only support the pilot for 72 hours.

The expert added that as the temperature of sea water is much lower than human body, the pilot is estimated to survive for about 80 hours if staying in water.

Chinese military and civilian rescuers have searched an area of over 300,000 km around the site of the incident in the South China Sea, and they have found no trace of the pilot and his equipment.

The expert guessed that possibly Wang Wei, having been injured, failed to inflate the life raft and get rid of the parachutes, and as a result the pilot and the equipment have sunken into the sea.

Though chance is slim, Liu said, a miracle cannot be ruled out if Wang the pilot had drifted to an islet and has been making full use of all he has got. In that case, the hero may return alive, he said.

Navy Chief Vows to Find Missing Pilot at All Cost

Officers and men of the Chinese Naval will continue to do their best to search for Wang Wei, the pilot who parachuted after the collision between his fighter jet and a US spy plane on Sunday morning.

He added that Chinese President Jiang Zemin is concerned about Wang's safety. Before he left for a Latin American trip, he told Shi that the Chinese Navy should, at all cost, do everything possible to search and rescue Wang.







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