A plane crashed into a tower in Beijing but China is not saying what happened

Even those aviation firms that confirmed to the BBC that authorities have grounded light aircraft operations since the incident did not wish to say more. "We were told to not speak about it. Please ask others," said a lady at a flight training institute in Beijing. Another firm in Chengdu declined to specify which authority the instruction came from, and promptly ended the call. Beijing enforces a permanent no-fly zone of roughly 100 sq km (39 sq miles) over its political core covering Tiananmen Square and Zhongnanhai, the heavily guarded compound where the country's top leaders live and work . Describing the incident as a "massive security breach", China analyst Bill Bishop wrote on X: "Not many more seconds of flying and [the crash] could have been at Zhongnanhai... [That would have been] an earthquake in Beijing's security system." Beijing also recently tightened regulations on drones , citing security concerns – drones now have to be registered before they can be brought in and out of the capital city. "The fact that a small plane, considerably larger than most drones, was able to fly across much of the city and get quite close to Zhongnanhai is both politically embarrassing and a major security lapse," says Raymond Kuo, vice-president of research at the Chicago Council of Global Affairs. It could have been a case of pilot error or a mechanical failure, Kuo says, but adds that it could also "potentially have been intentional". …