SF-260 Crash: Four Philippine Air Force Pilots Killed

Two SIAI-Marchetti SF-260 trainer aircraft of the Philippine Air Force have collided in mid-air during a training flight over Fernando Air Base in Lipa City, Batangas province, killing all four pilots aboard at 3:51 p.m. on October 23. The service confirmed the deaths in a statement released the following day, reporting that both aircraft came down inside the base perimeter with no other casualties, and withheld the pilots’ names while it coordinated with their families. Every SF-260 in service has since been temporarily grounded as what the Air Force called a precautionary safety measure. An investigation into the cause is under way, with no account yet given of the aircraft’s flight paths or of the exercise being flown. The collision is the second fatal SF-260 accident in five months, and it leaves the service’s basic flying training without its primary trainer for the second time this year.

The Air Force statement, carried by Agence France-Presse and Reuters, said that the service “honors the service and sacrifice of our fallen aviators” and asked the public to respect the families’ privacy. It gave no indication of how long the grounding would last or how many airframes it covers. Video obtained by Philippine broadcaster GMA News reportedly shows the two aircraft striking each other in flight, although the Air Force has not commented on the footage or on whether the pair were flying in formation. The SF-260 is the light propeller aircraft that Philippine cadets fly before moving on to jets, and Fernando Air Base is the fleet’s home station, which means that the grounding halts the earliest stage of pilot production rather than any frontline capability.

The accident follows the loss of SF-260 tail number 10-39 in Tuba, Benguet, on May 20, when the aircraft went down during a navigation training flight as one of ten trainers flying from Fernando Air Base to Baguio. That crash killed instructor pilot 1st Lt. Ruth Angelique Pasos and aviation student 2nd Lt. Cherky Embudo. The Air Force grounded its remaining 16 SF-260s at the time pending an investigation whose findings have not been disclosed, with the fleet having evidently returned to the air before Friday’s collision. Training losses have been far from confined to the Philippines this month, with a Russian Su-30SM fighter having crashed in Kaliningrad on October 21 after its crew ejected, and a Saudi National Guard AH-6i light helicopter having gone down in Najran days earlier with the loss of two officers, although the Philippine accident stands out for claiming four aircrew in a single sortie.

The SF-260 is an Italian design originally produced by SIAI-Marchetti, a company since absorbed into Leonardo, and the Philippine Air Force has flown successive versions of it for decades. Its current training fleet was rebuilt around 18 SF-260FH trainers bought for 622.59 million pesos, the first of which arrived at Clark Air Base on November 29, 2010, with further batches delivered in 2011. The type has suffered repeated fatal accidents in Philippine service since then, with an SF-260FH having crashed into the sea off Nasugbu in Batangas during an exhibition flight on January 31, 2015, killing both pilots and grounding the remaining 16 aircraft. A further SF-260 came down in a rice field in Pilar, Bataan, in January 2023, killing its two aviators.