Chinese authorities have concluded that the man who flew a small aircraft into Beijing's tallest skyscraper last week was a 66-year-old with documented mental health problems who acted for "personal reasons". The Chaoyang district government — the administrative district in which the building is located — released its most detailed account of the incident on Thursday, identifying the pilot only by his surname, Liu.
According to the statement, Liu took off on the afternoon of 26 June from a general aviation airport in Pinggu, a district on the far eastern outskirts of Beijing. After an initial accompanied flight, he conducted a solo flight during which he deviated from his designated route, lost contact with the airport, and struck the CITIC Tower — a 109-storey skyscraper that serves as the headquarters of a major state-owned financial conglomerate. The pilot was killed on impact; 13 others were injured, none fatally, and one has since been discharged from hospital. Liu, a divorced freelancer who lived alone, had obtained a sport pilot's licence in 2021 and a private pilot's licence in 2024. The aircraft was a two-seat, single-engine Aurora SA60L, a light plane roughly seven metres long designed for recreational flying and aerial photography.
Authorities said Liu had suffered from chronic insomnia and anxiety, and that his diary contained "multiple expressions of ending his life". The official investigation concluded the crash was an act of endangering public safety driven by personal grievances — a framing consistent with how Chinese authorities have handled a string of similar incidents in recent years, often described domestically as "revenge against society" attacks, in which individuals apparently pushed to breaking point have carried out deadly acts in public spaces.
The incident has raised serious questions about aviation security that the official account has not fully resolved. Beijing maintains some of the world's most stringent airspace controls: all flights, including light aircraft, require advance authorisation, with detailed flight plans submitted by 3pm the day before departure. Overflights of urban areas are generally prohibited. The CITIC Tower sits roughly eight kilometres from Zhongnanhai, the walled compound where President Xi Jinping and other senior Communist Party leaders work and reside. How a small propeller aircraft managed to penetrate restricted airspace near such a sensitive location remains unexplained, and questions about possible security failures have continued to circulate online — though posts raising the issue have been repeatedly removed from Chinese social media platforms.
The Chinese authorities did not release any official statement about the crash until nearly 24 hours after it occurred. On the night of the incident, police established a heavy presence around the tower and ordered bystanders not to take photographs. Videos and images that initially spread on social media were swiftly deleted, and searches on the platform Weibo this week returned results either unrelated to the crash or actively denying it had happened. At least three aviation companies have since told reporters they were instructed to suspend light aircraft operations in the aftermath of the incident.