Light aircraft hits Beijing’s tallest tower, killing pilot and injuring 13

A light aircraft slammed into CITIC Tower, Beijing’s tallest building, leaving a jagged hole in the glass curtain wall and killing the pilot while injuring 13 people on the ground. The crash on June 26, 2026, hit the 108-story, 528-meter tower in Chaoyang district at 5:55 p.m. local time, near the East Third Ring Road in the heart of the capital’s Central Business District.

The building, known as China Zun, is one of Beijing’s most recognizable landmarks and sits a short drive from Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of China’s top leadership, and the Forbidden City. Published photos showed the damage was limited to the loss of two large glass panels, but that opening was later boarded up, and other visible traces of the incident were quickly erased from public view.

The aircraft was identified as a two-seat, single-engine light sport plane, a Sunward SA60L Aurora with registration B-12PP. Flight-tracking data showed it took off from an airport about 50 kilometers east of Beijing, then circled westward toward downtown before tracking stopped in Chaoyang at the time of the crash. The unusual path underscored how extraordinary it was for a private aircraft to reach one of the city’s most sensitive zones, where airspace is heavily restricted.

Authorities in Chaoyang said the people injured were receiving medical treatment, but details about the cause of the crash and the pilot were sparse. The incident drew immediate attention because it was the first aircraft crash in Beijing since 2022, when a tourist helicopter went down during a flight between Changping and Fangshan, killing the two pilots. It also revived questions about how a light aircraft entered the capital’s controlled airspace and what that says about aviation security around China’s seat of power.

The public record around the crash narrowed as quickly as the physical damage did. Social-media posts, video clips and search results about the incident were scrubbed from China’s internet, and a Caixin report on the casualties became inaccessible. Beijing Daily was among the few state outlets to carry an early official account, while a Citic Group video later appeared to reject online speculation that one of its employees had been the pilot. The silence around the crash became part of the story: a visible strike on a landmark tower, followed by a controlled and incomplete account of what happened inside one of the most closely watched parts of Beijing.