Two US F/A-18 Hornets left Tainan yesterday afternoon, ending a two-day maintenance stop that had pundits going overboard in trying to read the portents and wire agencies trotting out the stale “sure to make Beijing angry” phrase with almost every update. So much malarkey over a blinking engine oil light.
The F/A-18s landed on the airfield that the Tainan Air Force Base shares with the civilian Tainan Airport at 1:19pm on Wednesday after one of the planes’ engine oil pressure warning lights went on and the pilots requested assistance. They left almost exactly 48 hours later after a repair crew from the US Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan flew into Tainan on Thursday evening to fix the problem.




