Two Philippine Air Force SF-260 trainers involved in an incident during a training flight at Lipa

Two SF-260 trainer aircraft of the Philippine Air Force were involved in an incident during a training flight at Fernando Air Base in Lipa City, Batangas, on the afternoon of 23 October, the air force has confirmed. ABS-CBN News put the time at around 3.50 pm local time, while Inquirer.net, citing the air force spokesperson, gave it as 3.51 pm.

The spokesperson, Colonel Alvin Jay Capinguian, said emergency response measures were activated as soon as the incident happened and that response teams were sent to secure the area and make an initial assessment. In a statement to defence reporters, he said the air force's first priority was the safety and welfare of the personnel involved and of people in the vicinity of the site.

By the evening of 23 October, the air force had not said what kind of incident it was, what condition the two aircraft were in, or whether any crew members or people on the ground were injured or killed, according to both outlets. Capinguian said further updates would be released as more information became available. TaiwanDefence has not seen any official casualty figure and is not reporting one.

The SF-260 is one of the propeller trainers the air force uses in its military pilot training programme, and the type was already under scrutiny this year. On 20 May, an SF-260 on a long navigation training flight crashed in the forest of Mount Santo Tomas in Tuba, Benguet, killing its instructor pilot, First Lieutenant Ruth Angelique Pasos, and an aviation student, Second Lieutenant Cherky Embudo, Inquirer.net reported at the time.

That aircraft had been one of 11 SF-260 trainers that left Fernando Air Base for Baguio City, and the other 10 completed the flight. After the crash, the air force grounded its remaining 16 SF-260 Marchetti trainers pending an investigation and suspended training on the type, while keeping other training aircraft flying, according to the same report.

The grounding disrupted the final phase of pilot training. Then air force spokesperson Colonel Ma. Christina Basco said in late May that the affected student pilots were doing long-range navigation flights, a final requirement before graduation, and that the service was relying on other trainers, including Cessna aircraft, while investigators worked. She said the inquiry was looking at human error, mechanical problems and weather, and she described the SF-260 as still a reliable training platform that undergoes regular maintenance. The aircraft lost in May had been bought in 2011, she said.

The reports on the latest incident did not say when SF-260 flights had resumed after the May grounding or what the findings of the Benguet investigation were. Whether the two trainers at Lipa collided with each other, suffered a ground incident or had another kind of mishap is also not yet public. The answer will bear on whether the trainer fleet faces another grounding like the one in May, which held up the final flights of student pilots close to graduation.