The detained crew of a United States EP-3E aircraft that landed in Hainan, China after a collision with a J-8 fighter, is released.

The Lockheed EP-3 is an electronic signals reconnaissance variant of the P-3 Orion, primarily operated by the United States Navy.

The Hainan Island incident was a ten-day international incident between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) that resulted from a mid-air collision between a United States Navy EP-3E ARIES II signals intelligence aircraft and a Chinese Air Force J-8 interceptor on April 1, 2001.

Hainan is an island province and the southernmost province of China. It consists of the eponymous Hainan Island and various smaller islands in the South China Sea under the province's administration. The name literally means "South of the Sea".

The Shenyang J-8 is a family of interceptor aircraft developed by the 601 Institute (Shenyang) in the People's Republic of China (PRC). It was conceived in the early 1960s as a low-risk program based on enlarging the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21F, a version of which the PRC was producing as the Chengdu J-7. The original J-8 experienced protracted development due to disruption from the Cultural Revolution; the prototypes first flew in 1969 but the design was not finalized until 1979 with the aircraft entering service in 1980.