PLA Harassment of Taiwanese Medical Evacuation Plane

On the morning of 26 June 2025, a civilian medical evacuation aircraft operated by Taiwan's Apex Aviation was flying from Taipei's Songshan airport to its base on the outlying Kinmen islands, which sit close to the Chinese mainland coast. According to the Institute for the Study of War, People's Liberation Army aircraft approached the Taiwanese plane without warning and flew within its visual range for about five minutes. The medevac plane was reportedly carrying no patients on this leg of the mission.

Reporting cited by the Institute for the Study of War identified the intercepting aircraft as a PLA JH-7 fighter-bomber and a J-10 fighter. Taiwan News and the Taipei Times reported the same aircraft types and the roughly five-minute close approach in airspace near Kinmen, with air traffic controllers warning a PLA aircraft to leave the civilian airway and informing the pilots that a fighter jet was flying alongside them. Apex Aviation said the distance between the aircraft was difficult to gauge.

Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council strongly condemned the encounter, calling on Beijing to cease actions that undermine humanitarian relief and endanger flight safety, and saying the conduct showed a disregard for human life. Officials framed it as part of a pattern of aerial grey-zone harassment. Medical flights to the outlying islands are routine: the Taipei Times reported that Kinmen alone saw 594 emergency medevac missions between 2018 and 2024, roughly 85 a year. The incident was only made public in September 2025.

The activity is attributable to the PLA and fits a documented pattern of Chinese grey-zone pressure around Taiwan, where military aircraft and ships routinely probe responses and assert claimed jurisdiction over Strait airspace. Targeting a clearly civilian humanitarian flight, even if the encounter overlapped with broader PLA patrols as Apex suggested, raises flight-safety risks and carries intimidation value. Intent is assessed rather than proven: plausible aims include testing Taiwan's reaction and normalising operations across the median line. Specific contested details, including exact distances and whether the approach was deliberate, remain hedged.