(and ONLY one) newscaster that I've seen locally has been reminding folks that in a similar situation, when we had a downed Soviet plane we returned it to them - in crates.

Apples and oranges. This one is the result of an emergency downing, and the Soviet plane was a defection. If the 24 air crew defected to Red China, it would be a completely different thing. The Soviet pilot stole his plane, and presented it to us. We might have been required to return it as stolen goods, but we chose not to; that point is fuzzy. As it is, however, in the current case, vessels in distress are not even BOARDABLE, let alone confiscatable, under international law.

Alex