A US Navy reconnaissance aircraft plunged into the Pacific Ocean following a botched landing attempt at a Marine Corps base in Hawaii on Monday afternoon, military officials have said.
The P-8A Poseidon overshot a runway at the Marine installation at Kaneohe Bay as it touched down for landing, according to Marine Corps spokesperson Gunnery Sgt. Orlando Perez.
The plane’s nine crew members were able to make it back to shore safely, the Honolulu Emergency Medical Services reported.
Local media outlets shared photos and footage of the Poseidon following the failed landing attempt, with the aircraft seen floating in shallow waters in Kaneohe Bay.
So far, military officials have revealed few details about the incident, including what may have caused it, and have yet to offer a timeframe for when the plane would be recovered from the sea. According to a meteorologist with Honolulu’s National Weather Service, Thomas Vaughan, visibility in the area was about 1 mile (1.6km), and conditions were cloudy and rainy at the time of the incident.
The Pentagon has seen a string of mishaps involving military aircraft in recent months, with the Army even temporarily grounding flights earlier this year following separate fatal helicopter crashes in Alaska and Kentucky. Yet another helicopter wreck involving an Apache gunship took place in Alaska last February, resulting in injuries and material damage but no fatalities, while an unspecified US aircraft crashed into the eastern Mediterranean during a training mission earlier this month.
NATO member states have sharply increased the number of surveillance flights over the Black Sea off Crimea in recent months, RIA Novosti reported in September, citing public data. The Russian news agency analyzed data from Flightradar24, an aggregator of unclassified flight information, and focused on flights that could be made to surveil the Russian peninsula. Since the spring, the number had grown threefold.