 MSU grad recalls 'Spy Plane' ordeal
For someone whose goal was to see the world, MSU graduate Jason Hanser has made a pretty good stab at it. Hanser was one of 24 crewmembers aboard a U.S. Navy surveillance plane that made an emergency landing in China March 31 after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet. "During the first moments of the aircraft going down I thought we would be killed," said Hanser. Following the landing, the crew spent 11 days in China at the center of a political tug of war. It was an ironic situation for Hanser. His degree from MSU in 1998 was in political science. He was seeing first hand what he had studied. Hanser was a cryptologic technician aboard the plane, it was his job to analyze and interpret signals the surveillance plane picked up. He was standing in the back of the spy plane monitoring the Chinese fighter as it made three passes toward the American turboprop plane. On the third pass the crew felt a violent shake. He thought it was a thumping or a nudge from the Chinese plane. "We lost about 8,000 feet of altitude in very, very rapid succession," Hanser said. At that point training kicked in and the crew reacted to the situation including taking an emergency ax to the interior of the plane and its top-secret, high-tech surveillance equipment. "It was a miracle that none of us got hurt. That we made it out was very lucky and a testament to our training," Hanser said. Once in captivity, the Billings native said he was not afraid of being killed. "I knew it was a political situation, not a situation where we were at war with China," he said. He said that the Chinese treated the crew decently while they were being held. "We didn't have any animosity toward our guards. They had their orders just like we had ours. We got a kick out of them; they taught us Chinese," he said. Hanser said the United States should not apologize for its surveillance flights and he will not apologize either. He said that surveillance flights are important work that will continue. After 11 days the political dance finally concluded and the crew was allowed to leave China. The crew was flown to Guam, then Hawaii and April 14 landed back at their home base on Whidbey Island, Washington. There he was reunited with his parents, Joe and Cathy, as well as his brothers, Jaecob, Jeoff and sister Chalesa. On April 18, Jason was given a hero's welcome in his hometown of Billings. "All this has been very overwhelming for one person," Hanser said. "The outpouring of support from across the nation was unbelievable. This is something that happens once in a lifetime and you never dream it would happen to you." What the future holds for Hanser is uncertain. He has three years left on his enlistment contract. He has had occasion to wonder about his luck since his enlistment in the Navy in January of 1999. "In my last three deployments, something has gone wrong with either the plane or the situation," he said. "On one deployment I was evacuated out of the Middle East and on another I spent two and a half weeks in Thailand with a broken down plane. I thought of it all as being bad luck, but all the situations did turn out fine." His long-term goal hasn't changed from his days at MSU. He'd like to work for the U.S. Marshal Service. As a student at MSU, Hanser was the director of ASMSU student security. "He took himself and what he did very seriously," said long-time friend Jaynee Groseth, director of the MSU Alumni Association. "He was always interested in things that required discipline. He was not put off by the responsibilities of student security." Hanser also was an orientation leader for two years and in the Army ROTC program on campus. He has a broad connection to MSU as his father, Joe, is a 1979 graduate and an aunt and several cousins are graduates. Brenda McDonald
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