Beijing Citic Tower Plane Crash Pilot Liu Junhua Diary Suicide Investigation

The pilot, who crashed a small plane into Beijing’s tallest building last week, had contemplated “ending his life” by writing it in his diary, Chinese authorities said on Thursday.

The government of China’s Chaoyang district, in a social media post, said its investigation into the reason behind the crash that took place on June 26 concluded that it was “personal reasons”, the Associated Press reported.

The government identified the pilot as a 66-year-old man, surnamed Liu, who died after flying a single-engine, two-seater propeller plane into a high-rise building, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.

The government added that the crash led to 13 people getting wounded, though no one had life-threatening injuries, and one of the injured has been discharged from the hospital.

The development comes after the small plane evaded one of the world’s strictest aviation controls and crashed into the 109-storey CITIC Tower on Friday around 6 pm (local time) that dominates Beijing’s skyline.

A CNN report stated that the incident was “strictly censored” in China and the authorities took nearly 24 hours to acknowledge the crash.

The report added that Liu received his first pilot licence in 2021. He was flying solo on the day of the incident and diverged from the designated track, losing contact with the airport before crashing into the CITIC Tower, which is 528-meter tall.

The skyscraper is located in Beijing’s Central Business District that houses major international companies and foreign embassies.

Officials said Liu wrote multiple references in his diary to “ending (his) life” and was a self-employed divorcé who used to live alone and suffered from chronic insomnia and anxiety.

The investigation into the case concluded that the incident was about endangering public safety caused by personal reasons, the government statement added.

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