{"id":66894,"date":"2024-09-23T12:20:37","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T03:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2024\/sep\/23\/phillip-mehrtens-new-zealand-pilot-west-papua-rescue"},"modified":"2024-09-23T12:20:37","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T03:20:37","slug":"the-flight-to-freedom-of-phillip-mehrtens-the-nz-pilot-who-survived-594-days-in-captivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=66894","title":{"rendered":"The flight to freedom of Phillip Mehrtens, the NZ pilot who survived 594 days in captivity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In February 2023 his plane was stormed by independence fighters in West Papua who said he may never be released and threatened to kill him. Somehow, Mehrtens survived and is now a free man<\/p>\n<p>On 7 February 2023, Phillip Mehrtens\u2019 life took an unexpected and harrowing turn.<\/p>\n<p>The experienced New Zealand pilot landed his tiny commercial plane at Paro airfield, a runway in the isolated highlands of Indonesia\u2019s West Papua region. It was to be a short in and out: drop off his five passengers, pick up a group of 15 construction workers and fly back south.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2024\/sep\/23\/phillip-mehrtens-new-zealand-pilot-west-papua-rescue\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In February 2023 his plane was stormed by independence fighters in West Papua who said he may never be released and threatened to kill him. Somehow, Mehrtens survived and is now a free manOn 7 February 2023, Phillip Mehrtens\u2019 life took an unexpected an&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2286,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,156,56,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-indonesia","category-new-zealand","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2286"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66894"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66895,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66894\/revisions\/66895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}