Death of Li Jianying
Chinese Army Air Force officer
Li Jianying (Chinese: 李剑英; pinyin: Lǐ Jiànyīng; May 1964 – November 4, 2006) was a People's Liberation Army Air Force pilot. Li chose to sacrifice himself in a crash landing rather than bail out and leave his plane to possibly plow into a village.
Li was born in Zhengzhou, Henan in 1964. He was known for his toughness and work ethic. He joined the army in 1982, and was a colonel and first-class pilot before his death. During his 22-year flying career, Li flew 5,003 times registering 2,389 hours of safe flights, and was awarded third- and second-class honors.
On November 14, 2006, Li Jianying was flying over an area containing seven villages, 814 households, an express toll station and a tile workshop when his fighter jet ran into a flock of pigeons. His jet had over 800 liters of aviation oil, more than 120 shells, a rocket, and explosive oxygen cylinders. Li knew that if he ejected, the jet would go out of control and possibly kill people. He radioed in that he was going to attempt a forced landing.
“Death of Li Jianying” enters the record as chinese Army Air Force officer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Death, Jianying and Chinese can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Death of Li Jianying” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.