Khang (right) with his two younger siblings and a relative: - cand.com.vn via Vietnam News/ANN
DAK LAK, Vietnam: A Vietnamese high school student has been formally commended after helping rescue an air force pilot who ejected from his aircraft following a training accident in the Central Highlands.
Nguyen Thanh Khang, 17, a student at Nguyen Van Linh High School in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak, came to the pilot’s aid on Wednesday (Jan 28) after hearing a loud explosion-like sound near his family’s home.
Khang was studying at home and looking after his two-year-old sister when he heard a noise from behind the house.
Investigating the sound, he found a man in a pilot’s flight suit sitting against a tree near the family’s livestock shed, bleeding from the mouth and nose.
Khang assisted the injured man and brought him to rest on the front porch while help was summoned. The pilot was later taken by taxi to a local medical centre after his colleagues arrived at the scene.
The injured man was later identified by the defence ministry as First Lieutenant Dinh Thanh Trung, a pilot of the 940th Air Regiment of the Air Force Officer's College.
The official statement from the ministry regarding the incident said Trung had taken off at 7.27am in a YAK-130 jet from a military airfield in eastern Dak Lak for a scheduled training flight. Contact with the aircraft was lost at 7.44am following a technical malfunction.
After unsuccessful attempts to resolve the problem, the pilot steered the aircraft away from residential areas before ejecting. The aircraft subsequently crashed in a mountainous area of Dong Hoa Ward.
A search team from the 940th Air Regiment, working with local military authorities and provincial fire and rescue police, reached the crash site later that morning and recovered the aircraft’s black box.
An investigation into the cause of the incident is under way.
Later the same day, the chairman of the People’s Committee of Hoa Hiep Ward issued an extraordinary commendation recognising Khang’s actions. — Vietnam News/ANN
