page_title: Hainan Island incident
section_title: Cause of collision
hierarchical_section_title: Hainan Island incident / In the air / Cause of collision
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of South china sea showing location of the Hainan Island incident. Used https://web.archive.org/web/20051226191538/www.pacom.mil/imagery/archive/0104photos/010401cinc-h.jpg, File:Schina sea 88.png and Google Maps as references
context_page_description: The Hainan Island incident occurred on April 1, 2001, when a United States Navy EP-3E ARIES II signals intelligence aircraft and a People's Liberation Army Navy J-8II interceptor fighter jet collided in mid-air, resulting in an international dispute between the United States of America and the People's Republic of China.
  The EP-3 was operating about 70 miles away from the PRC island province of Hainan, and about 100 miles away from the Chinese military installation in the Paracel Islands, when it was intercepted by two J-8 fighters. A collision between the EP-3 and one of the J-8s caused the death of a PRC pilot, and the EP-3 was forced to make an emergency landing on Hainan. The 24 crew members were detained and interrogated by the Chinese authorities until a statement was delivered by the United States government regarding the incident. The exact phrasing of this document was intentionally ambiguous and allowed both countries to save face while defusing a potentially volatile situation between militarily strong regional states.
context_section_description: Both the cause of the collision and the assignment of blame were disputed. The U.S. government claimed that the Chinese jet bumped the wing of the larger, slower, and less maneuverable EP-3. After returning to U.S. soil, the pilot of the EP-3, Lt. Shane Osborn, was allowed to make a brief statement in which he said that the EP-3 was on autopilot and in straight-and-level flight at the time of the collision. He stated that he was just "guarding the autopilot" in his interview with Frontline. The U.S. released video footage from previous missions which revealed that American reconnaissance crews had previously been intercepted by the same aircraft.
  Based on the account of Wang Wei's wingman, the Chinese government stated that the American aircraft "veered at a wide angle towards the Chinese", in the process ramming the J-8.  This claim cannot be verified since the Chinese government did not release data from the flight recorders of either aircraft, both of which are in its possession.
caption: Area of the collision in the South China Sea
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