Plane Leaves Hainan With Spy Plane Crew
April 11 -- After being held for 11 days in China, the 24 crew members of a U.S. spy plane are on their way home.
A chartered Continental Airlines Boeing 737 picked up the crew from Hainan, an island in the South China Sea, and is taking them to Guam. The plane is set to land at midnight, ET, said Rear Admiral Craig Quigley.
From Guam, the 21 men and three women will transfer to a military aircraft after a four-to-five hour layover and will fly to Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu, Quigley said at a Pentagon briefing. The crew is expected to land at 6:30 a.m. local time or 12:30 p.m. ET and should remain in Hawaii for two or three days before returning to Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Washington state.
Flying with the crew is a 13-member repatriation team that includes psycologists, medical doctors and military intelligence officers who intend to question the crew about the accident that led to their detainment in China, Quigley said.
China decided to release the crew on "humanitarian grounds," after receiving a letter from U.S. Ambassador to China Joseph Prueher that said America is "very sorry" for the death of the Chinese pilot and for landing on Chinese soil without permission.
A White House official told ABCNEWS the wording of the letter delivered by Prueher today was the same as the one delivered to the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing two days ago.
Working Out the Details
The Chinese decision to release the U.S. crew came after more than a week of wrangling between diplomats on both sides that resulted in a carefully worded letter, which gave room for both sides to claim victory after an 11-day diplomatic standoff.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said China and the United States were working out details for the release of the crippled EP-3E Aries II, a highly sophisticated surveillance aircraft that is currently grounded at the Lingshui air base on Hainan.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi today said China would first conduct an investigation of the incident. "The Chinese side has all rights to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the foreign reconnaissance plane," he said. "We will handle the plane according to the results of the investigation."
