Military trainer jet crashes in Vietnam killing 2

By Bennett Murray

HANOI, Vietnam (AA) - A trainer jet for Vietnam's military has plunged into the ground in the country's south shortly after takeoff, killing one military student pilot and a person on the ground.

The Czechoslovakia-made Aero L-39 Albatros initially crashed onto a highway Friday morning before sliding into an adjacent rice paddy in Phu Yen province, the local Thanh Nien newspaper reported.

The crash comes just two months after a Vietnamese coastguard CASA C-212 turboprop went down taking nine lives in the Gulf of Tonkin.

It had been searching for another downed plane, a Su-30 fighter jet, that had disappeared two days before.

The state of repair of the Vietnamese military’s air fleet is a sensitive topic for the government, which revoked the credentials of local journalist Mai Phan Loi after he speculated on social media that corruption in the military was responsible for shoddy maintenance following June’s crashes.

Loi was "seriously damaging the reputation of [the] Vietnamese People's Army,” said Information Minister Truong Minh Tuan in a statement.

Vietnam’s military aircraft are mostly decades-old planes and helicopters from the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries.

But with the United States’ arms embargo lifted, Vietnam may now buy modern U.S. aircraft on a case-by-case basis.