I’m always reluctant to post these stories and I always get a lot of flak from them, but I think it’s important for folks who might not have access to them that are involved in some way with aviation to see what happened and get some “lessons learned” data that can maybe help them down the road.
A Harrier crash on Feb. 13 near Cherry Point (the second in a series of four so far this fiscal year) was initially thought to have been caused by engine failure. But according to the Judge Advocate General Manual investigation I got my hand on through FOIA the cause was a far simpler — and more correctable one.
According to an official investigation report released after a Freedom of Information Act Request from Military.com, the pilot, Capt. Ian Stevens, failed to move the jet nozzles of his Harrier to the position required for conventional flight during a Feb. 13 mission to practice aerial refueling and ground attack runs near Cherry Point Marine Air Station, causing the plane to drop from the sky.
That’s from a story we’re posting today on Military.com (there’ve been some technical snags so publishing is delayed). Here’s a bit more:
“This mishap was caused by the mishap pilot not positioning the nozzles back to the aft position after positioning them … to the hoverstop position in order to … stabilize in a proper formation position with is lead,” the investigating officer stated in the report. “The thrust remained vectored below the aircraft until the aircraft impacted the ground.” …
Stevens executed several successful aerial refueling runs on a KC-10 Extender tanker, the report said, before peeling away with the other two Harriers to practice using his targeting pod during mock ground attacks. As he was trying to slow down and join up with the lead pilot of the flight, whose name is redacted from the report, things started to go wrong.
“The engine sounded like it was spooling up … but the lead [pilot] continued to pull away from me,” Stevens — whose name was removed from the report but released to local media at the time of the crash — told investigators in a statement. “I … increased power to ‘mil’ but did not feel a corresponding acceleration. I decided that I had a problem.”
After several successful mid-air engine restarts but with no resulting forward thrust, Stevens was out of options and decided to eject as his plane plummeted toward Earth.
“I had tried all the emergency procedures I could think of and could not figure out what the problem was,” Stevens told investigators. “After the second airstart, I still wasn’t getting acceleration from the engine and I was out of ideas, so I decided to eject.”
Investigators who examined the wreckage of the plane and downloaded flight data from an onboard diagnostics recorder found that Stevens had redirected the thrust nozzles — which can be shifted about 90 degrees to allow the Harrier to hover or fly conventionally — downward to slow down enough to meet up with his wingman. But as he approached the other Harrier, Stevens forgot to move the nozzles aft, resulting in a functioning engine but no forward thrust.
“I’m pretty sure I put the nozzles back to the aft before I powered up, but looking back now I’m not absolutely positive,” Stevens told investigators.
It’s a rookie mistake from a rookie pilot who did everything right when he was presented with and diagnosed the problem. Thing is, the idea to check the nozzle angle wasn’t in his decision tree. I’m sure it is now, though.
I talked to a long time Marine buddy of mine who’s a Harrier pilot and currently an instructor and he said the Harriers — after a pretty shaky track record — are performing very well lately given their high optempo. That jet is notoriously difficult to fly and just qualifying to get in the cockpit is a huge feat.
My thoughts go out to this young pilot and I hope the mishap didn’t scuttle a budding career. But it is important that aviators worldwide who operate this complex aircraft keep this kind of mistake in mind. Sometimes its the simplest explanation that solves a life-threatening problem.
– Christian
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Sounds like he panicked!
I’m surprised that all he did was try to restart his engine several times(successfully!). I think this man is an idiot! If all… and I mean all the gauges read normal, plus it sounds ok, etc. I don’t know how he didn’t figure that it means the engine is working perfectly.
Why didn’t he try to put the nose over and get a bit of speed up and attempt a landing, or at least glide to an area where he felt it would be safest to eject?
Loss of power is something everyone trains for. I wouldn’t be surprised that he never gets to fly anything again! I wouldn’t want him flying anywhere near my neighbourhood.
Maybe I expect too much from pilots…
Vstress: How well do harriers glide?
In such a high stress situation pilots can fall prone to a tunnel vision of sorts. Focusing on what their mind thinks the problem is and filtering out even the most obvious clues to the contrary.
Did they ever announce the cause of that BUFF loss in the Philippines a few weeks back? I heard one helluva nasty rumor.
“This mishap was caused by the mishap pilot…”
So he was just doing his job then?
If he’s a “rookie pilot” & it wasn’t part of his “decision tree”. Then was the issue addressed/rehearsed with adequate simulator time?
Difficulties in operating machines, can sometimes be remedied by creating a better man-machine interface. That said, is the thrust-vector lever the only indicator for nozzle direction, or is their an indicator on the display? One could also ask, how does the F-35B address this issue & how does it differ from the AV-8B?
How simple would it be to have a nozzell in dicator light to show the angle its at the present time. Maybe put on the HUD.
Talk about a “Man in the Arena” moment! I’ve never done it but admire the guys who do. To slam this Marine is to forget the personal sacrifice that he is taking upon his shoulders. Naval aviation is a dangerous profession and to ridicule him because of this mishap is shameful. Thanks for posting it — the knowledge should be out there. For the posters that are deriding this gentleman…get a life.
Interesting story, always amazes me what the human mind does to you under stress. I hope this mans career is not totally destroyed.
Vstress, maybe next time the marines need close air support you can fly the mission if your so goddamn smart. pound salt moron.
My instructors used to tell me:
There are only 2 types of pilots, old pilots and bold pilots, there are no Old Bold pilots.
Do your checks son.
Pilot error is rarely a helpful way to describe the cause of an accident, and ofen obscures the issue by implying that the accident was not preventable by any means other than locating perfect people to be pilots.
The far more important question is whether the error was one that was foreseeable, and if so, if anything could have been done to prevent it.
In the more familiar area of rear end automotive collisions, driver error by a driver who is following too closely from behind is almost always the official prognosis for the cause of the accident. But, very simply design features like a third centrally mounted brake light have greatly reduced the incident of these kinds of accidents.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if many of the Harrier accidents attributed to pilot error are likewise attributable to a failure to incorporate error preventing elements in the design of the aircraft and/or the systems used when operating it. Perhaps too little of the Harrier’s operation is automated. Perhaps the pilot interface is poor. Perhaps training is missing something. But, pilot error while a necessary cause of a crash, is not a sufficient one.
A light on the console in front if the pilot would be a prudent simple prevention measure.
Expect from a pilot only what his instructors prepared him for.
Put it this way: if you just learned how to drive for the first time, having practiced in an automatic car (think non-VTOL plane), and your instructor trains you on a standard for maybe a week (think simulation training) and then asks you to drive one (think actually flying a harrier), you might be prone to making mistakes.
Simply put, these people fly planes, they aren’t engineers. It’s a whole different mindset if you have to suddenly think about technical difficulties while flying. If you had a flight engineer or technician in the back seat of the Harrier, you’d probably have a different story.
Besides, even if he’s not the most aware person, that would be the recruiter’s fault for not screening their troops hard enough.
I would suspect that most Harrier pilots probably have either military academy or ROTC engineering degrees, not that it takes away from the point made by Fier.
In the more familiar area of rear end automotive collisions, driver error by a driver who is following too closely from behind is almost always the official prognosis for the cause of the accident. But, very simply design features like a third centrally mounted brake light have greatly reduced the incident of these kinds of accidents.
Harriers hover, if the nozzles were down and the throttel WFO, why no hover?
Half the people who posted on here are complete idiots. The same idiots who watch TV for all their news and will probably never experience what its like to handle an emergency in any sort of aircraft, let alone one of the most dangerous and complicated single seat tactical Naval jets we have ever flown. I'm also sitting here laughing at some of you with your advice on various lights and gauges that should be installed to prevent these "situations". I'm willing to bet half of you can't even handle a car in bad weather and yet here you are, passing judgment on something you have absolutely ZERO knowledge about.
While there are plenty of engineers who are great pilots, it does not mean you must be one to be the other. For the record, there is a gauge on the instrument panel that indicates the nozzle angle. Also, with the main generator offline, the HUD also goes offline and in normal wing borne flight, the nozzle angle is not displayed in the HUD anyways. I don't know what may or may not have occurred in that cockpit but the first step to an airstart is "nozzles aft". Whether this did or did not occur is a mystery I can't answer.
To answer the poster wondering why it did not just hover, there is no simple answer. Hover performance depends on a variety of thing. The most important being the weight of the A/C at any given time. We normally take off well above hover weight and since the article said he had just done refueling, I would guess he was over weight. Next, the jet isn't made to hover at 10,000 feet or however high he might have been. The higher you do, the less air you have to use and this means less performance. Lastly, hover performance also depends on factors such as air temperature and density. All these factors combine to either allow you to hover or not.
Before the pointless guessing game continues, I just want to add that unless you have flown a tactical jet, ANY tactical jet, you have absolutely no business throwing in your two cents on the topic at hand. I'm willing to bet that not a single one of you has and I would recommend you all keep your opinions to yourself…otherwise you are all just going to continue making fools of yourselves.
Dear Sir,
I appreciate your attempt to tell the ignorants that they are ignorants. However, you will fail because accidents in aviation are very popular to those idiots (sad but true). The folks won´t stop talking about things they understand nothing about.
You keep the blue side up and have happy landings, regards,
M., helicopter and jet pilot