Vietnamese military continues search for downed chopper

By Bennett Murray

HANOI, Vietnam (AA) – Vietnam’s military continued its search Wednesday for a crashed air force helicopter in the country’s south.

The Eurocopter EC130 -- a single engine helicopter used as a trainer -- reportedly crashed at 8.30 a.m. (0130GMT) in mountains around 80 kilometers (49.7 miles) from Ho Chi Minh City on Tuesday, reported the VN Express news site.

One pilot and two student pilots were reportedly on board.

Around 400 soldiers and local residents, who were mobilized by the military to aid the search, continued to comb the area Wednesday morning despite poor weather and rough terrain.

The crash was believed to have occurred on Vang Tau’s Mount Palace, where a plume of black smoke was observed yesterday.

Neither the cause of the crash nor the fate of the crew has been established.

The crash comes four 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.