Chinese navy helicopter shadows Philippine patrol flight over Scarborough Shoal

A Chinese navy helicopter tailed a Philippine Navy AW109 helicopter for the whole of a maritime patrol flight over Scarborough Shoal on Thursday, 15 October, while China said People's Liberation Army (PLA) forces had warned the Philippine aircraft and driven it out of what Beijing regards as Chinese airspace.

The Philippine Navy frigate BRP Miguel Malvar was carrying out what Manila called a maritime and sovereignty patrol about 20 nautical miles south of the shoal, which the Philippines calls Bajo de Masinloc and China calls Huangyan Dao. The ship launched its AW109 for a maritime domain awareness flight, and the Navy said it kept watch on two PLA Navy warships and one China Coast Guard ship in the area.

Lieutenant Hazel Joy Feliciano, the AW109 pilot in command, told reporters that a Chinese military helicopter took off from PLA Navy ship 554 seconds after the Philippine aircraft was launched. She said it followed the AW109 all the way to the shoal and monitored the crew throughout the flight, but did not carry out any dangerous manoeuvres.

Captain Paul Michael Hechanova, the frigate's commanding officer, said there were no untoward incidents or aggressive acts from the three Chinese ships. Ship 554 issued radio challenges, and the Philippine crew replied that it was on a routine patrol inside the Philippine exclusive economic zone; he said the Chinese side did not answer that reply and described such challenges as normal in the area.

The Chinese ships mostly kept a safe distance, Hechanova said. ABS-CBN reported that a warship it identified as hull 544 came as close as 0.6 nautical miles to the frigate, while DZRH reported that a Chinese vessel came within about 1,200 yards.

From the air, the AW109 crew saw Chinese maritime militia boats, a research vessel and numerous buoys inside the shoal. Hechanova said the Navy was still checking photographs from the flight, but that the markers and buoys appeared unchanged and the crew saw no new structures.

Beijing described the flight differently. The Hong Kong news site on.cc reported on Thursday evening that the helicopter had been launched from a Philippine warship near the shoal and had illegally entered Chinese airspace above it, and that naval and air forces of the PLA Southern Theater Command tracked and identified it throughout and warned it away in accordance with the law. China calls the shoal Huangyan Island and treats it as its own territory.

The flight came less than two weeks after a sharper encounter in the same area. The Armed Forces of the Philippines said on 4 October that a Chinese J-16 fighter had repeatedly approached a Philippine C-208 patrol aircraft near the shoal the day before, manoeuvring ahead of and around it and flying in its wake, which it said posed an aviation safety risk.

Scarborough Shoal lies about 124 nautical miles west of the Philippine province of Zambales, inside the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone Manila claims, and about 472 nautical miles from China's Hainan province. Beijing has controlled the shoal since 2012, and a 2016 arbitral ruling recognised it as a traditional fishing ground.