'Two Air Force pilots died in aircraft carrier test' misinterpreted

Many media recently reported "Two pilots of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) died in aircraft carrier test". Reporter of the website of the People's Daily interviewed military officers and confirmed that the two pilots, who died, neither died during carrying out aircraft carrier test missions nor were they test pilots of the ship-borne aircraft.

A lot of people recently forwarded the news that "Two Chinese PLAAF pilots died in aircraft carrier test" on micro-blog, including the official micro-blog account of some well-known media, and many reports with this title can also be found on the Internet.

All these reports stem from a report on Xinhuanet, a website under Xinhua News Agency, titled "CMC Chairman Xi Jinping signs order to grant honors to one unit and one individual" dated August 27, 2014.

The main contents of that report are that the Central Military Commission (CMC) of the Communist Party of China (CPC) granted the honor of "Heroic Test Flight Group" to a test flight group of the PLAAF and the honor of "Heroic Test Pilot of Ship-borne Aircraft" to Dai Mingmeng, deputy commander of a ship-borne aviation troop unit of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).

"This test flight group has successfully completed all kinds of experimental and test flight missions over long years and has filled 13 blanks in the aviation field. In spite of the danger to their lives, the members of the group have repeatedly challenged equipment and physical limitations, and two members of the group have devoted their lives. The group has made particular major contributions to J-15's successful arresting-landing and ski-jump take-off on the aircraft carrier 'Liaoning' of the PLAN," said the report.

If we read the report on Xinhuanet carefully, we can easily see that it only says two members of the test flight group have devoted their lives over long years of test flight missions, but doesn't specify that they died in aircraft carrier tests nor in any way imply that they died when carrying out the J-15 ship-borne aircraft missions.

This originally unequivocal sentence was tampered into "official statement says two PLAAF pilots died in aircraft carrier test" by a website on September 6, 2014 more than a week later, and the tampered article was further spread and fermented on micro-blog, causing misunderstanding among the netizens.

Several military officers told the reporter that some pilots of the honored test flight group participated in the test flight of ship-borne aircraft but nobody died, and the two pilots, who devoted their lives, died in previous test flight missions.

China has always been open about the death of test pilot, and the media publicly reported on the test flight casualties in 2013.

"Generations after generations of test pilots have encountered over 3,000 dangers in the air during countless test flights and successfully dealt with over 400 major and severe situations that nearly caused fatal crash, saving tens of billions of direct economic losses for the country."

"27 PLAAF test pilots have devoted their lives to the country in the 61-year history of test flight."