HANOI: A Vietnamese trainee pilot was killed when his fighter jet crashed into a rice field, an official said Friday, the third deadly military plane accident since June. The pilot was the only one on board when the plane went down in south-central Vietnam, the Ministry of Defence said on state-run television. The L39 fighter jet belonged to the air force pilot training college near the crash site in coastal Phu Yen province, chief administrator of the provincial people’s committee told AFP. “During its training session, the fighter jet crashed into the rice field, killing the trainee pilot on board,” Ho Thi Nguyen Thao said. Though Vietnam’s civilian aviation sector has a strong safety record, there have been several recent accidents involving military aircraft. In June, a jet fighter carrying two pilots crashed during a training mission off the coast of northern Nghe An province, with only one of the pilots rescued. Days later, a military search plane deployed to find the missing pilot lost contact and was later found crashed with all nine people on board dead.