Damage is visible on the China Zun tower on June 27 after it was struck by a small plane the day before, in Beijing, China.Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
The pilot of a small plane which crashed into Beijing’s tallest skyscraper late last month was suffering from mental health problems, the authorities said this week.
In their most detailed statement yet on the crash, the government of Beijing’s Chaoyang district said the 66-year-old pilot, surnamed Liu, “suffered from chronic insomnia and anxiety,” and had written repeatedly in his diary about “ending his life.”
Mr. Liu died in the crash and 13 people were injured, though none had life-threatening injuries, the authorities said.
“The comprehensive investigation concluded that this was a case of endangering public safety caused by personal reasons,” the statement said.
In the early evening of June 26, Mr. Liu piloted a two-seater light sport aircraft from a small airport in Pinggu District, in the northeastern suburbs of Beijing. The plane in question, a single-engine Aurora SA60L with the registration number B-12PP, was mainly used for training purposes, with typical archive flight data showing it taking off and repeatedly circling the Pinggu airport.
On the date in question, Mr. Liu – who received a private pilot’s licence in 2024 – also appeared to be conducting a regular loop around the airport, before veering off to the west and heading toward central Beijing.
The airspace over the Chinese capital is tightly controlled, with the authorities weeks earlier introducing new regulations on consumer drone flights. Just how a plane, even a small two-seat propeller aircraft, was able to bypass detection and alert systems remains an open question, unaddressed in the official statement. China Zun, the tower into which Mr. Liu’s plane crashed, sits less than 10 kilometres from Tiananmen Square and the government compound of Zhongnanhai.
“During the independent flight, he deviated from the designated area and lost contact with the airport, subsequently colliding with the high-rise building and dying at the scene,” the Chaoyang government said with regard to Mr. Liu’s final journey.
Photos and video from the scene, which were quickly censored on the Chinese internet but spread online beyond the reaches of the Great Firewall, showed the plane sticking out of the side of the 109-storey China Zun tower. Two large glass panels were damaged in the crash, and debris from the building and plane fell to the street below.
While violent crimes are rare in China, the country has at times grappled with mass casualty events, in which people have driven cars into crowds or attacked people with knives, including several incidents targeting schools and kindergartens.
Little is known about many of these incidents, which are often met with intense censorship and a swift conviction of the perpetrators, but many in China refer to them as people taking “revenge on society,” drawing connections between the attacks and economic and societal pressures.
After a spate of such incidents in late 2024, Chinese President Xi Jinping urged local governments to “draw lessons from the case” and “strengthen their prevention and control of risks at the source.”