[From the front page of Military.com]
A pilot struggling to control a crippled Marine Corps jet bypassed a chance to land at a coastal Navy base and instead flew toward an inland base, where minutes later the fighter crashed into a San Diego neighborhood and killed four people, recordings released Tuesday revealed.
Meanwhile, military officials say that four officers at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar have been relieved of duty in connection with the fatal crash and nine other military personnel received lesser reprimands. Officials said the 13 were disciplined for a series of avoidable mechanical and human errors that led to the crash, which killed four members of the same family, including two children.
“It was collectively bad decision-making,” said Col. John Rupp, operations officer for the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.
Recordings of conversations between federal air controllers and the pilot of the F/A-18D Hornet show the pilot repeatedly was offered a chance to land the plane at the Naval Air Station North Island in Coronado. The base sits at the tip of a peninsula with a flight path over water.
Instead, the Federal Aviation Administration tapes disclose, the pilot decided to fly the jet, which had lost one engine and was showing signs of trouble with the second, to the inland Miramar base, which is about 10 miles north of Coronado.
That route took him over the University City neighborhood, where the Dec. 8 crash incinerated two homes and damaged three others.
“This was a tragic incident that could have been prevented,” Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who was among the lawmakers who received a closed-door briefing Tuesday on the results of the Marine Corps’ investigation into the crash, said in a statement.
The pilot and senior officers “did not consult their checklists and follow appropriate procedure,” Hunter said. Had those rules been followed, “the crash would not have occurred.”
Four officers at Miramar have been relieved of duty for failing to follow safety procedures and allowing the Hornet to fly over the residential area, while nine other military personnel received lesser reprimands.
According to the military, the jet’s right engine went out due to an oil leak shortly after the fighter left the deck of the Navy aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on a training flight. The aircraft can fly on one engine, so losing power in one of the General Electric turbofan engines was not cause for extreme concern.
At the same time, the plane was having trouble moving fuel from its tanks to the engines. Marine Corps aviation rules dictate that a plane with such a combination of mechanical failures should land immediately. The investigation determined the best and safest option was to bring the aircraft down at Coronado, not Miramar.
As the jet approached Miramar, the left engine failed because it was getting too little fuel, leaving the plane without power. Seventeen seconds later, the pilot ejected.
Read the rest of the story at Military.com.
– Christian
Sad news for all involved, especially the training pilot. Ditching out in the water or at North Island would have been much-preferred to traveling back to Miramar. A very somber outcome for MCAS Miramar, the training squadron, and all those affected by this tragedy.
very bad choice to eject out but imagine the pressure he was under! No RAF pilot woud be stupid enough to do that and no RAF ground mechanics would be stupid enough to have the aircraft fly if thy were not 100% sure it wouldnt fail.
Foreign boy and britt boy… Don’t be daft. The problem isn’t that he ejected; it’s that he flew over heavily populated areas with one engine gone and problems in the other engine when he had a safer and closer runway available.
Most of the blame lies with his squadron commander and others on the ground who told/approved of him going to Miramar.
Ejecting from a plane about to hit the ground is not an act deserving criticism.
To my way of thinking, this tragedy is book-ended by the Hudson River accident. Sullenberger knew that trying for any nearby runway would endanger more people than those already at risk, and went the route of least harm. Doesn’t sound like that was thought about, here.
If airworthiness is in doubt, don’t risk any more lives than necessary. Simple idea, but needs to be tattooed in their brains as students.
BTW, please nobody suggest he should have rode the jet in. The pilot’s death would have been pointless.
Sympathies to all involved.
Foreign Boy,
By the time the pilot ejected, he had lost all flight controls of the aircraft. There was no way he could have aimed it elsewhere. Had he stayed with it, the bird would have landed in the same place, and we could have added him to the casualties. Knowing many military pilots, I would say that he is probably feeling plenty of guilt, as are the others involved. The US military and the Marine Corps are in the business of protecting Americans, and an incident like this tears us all up.
You also have to realize that he was over land for a short time, and that he had very little time to react. That’s why we pay them the big bucks, and in this case bad decisions were made. However, his last decision, to eject, was correct.
Ah okay,
I in now way doubt that this pilot is upset by his actions. Yes, I have forgotten that the engines not only power the flight of the ‘bird’ but also the electronics and probably other control mechanisms. God forbid anything like this happens to any of the new ‘digital’ jets like the F22.
I’m sure like many people I wish that an incident won’t be repeated…
I have listened to the ATC tape and am a private pilot. Just a few thoughts.
1. You have pilot in training which means low hours and much much less experience than Sullenberger so lets really not go there.
2. This pilot in training is flying one of the most high performance aircraft in the world. Which means it can be a little finicky.
3. He has no copilot to help him with the work load. This is key point that unless you have flown can not be overstated. This becomes evident as his communication with ATC breaks down. You are suppose to repeat back to ATC the exact instructions that you were given. At the beginning of his transmissions he is doing this but shortly thereafter he gets sloppy. A copilot will often handle the radios.
4. He never informs ATC he is having problems transferring fuel. When in trouble you must state the total nature of the problem. He only states he has an engine out. To give the pilot the benefit of the doubt he may not have at the time fully realized that he had a fuel problem.
5. He has two people in his ear. The ground folks back at Miramar and ATC. Apparently Miramar was trying to work him through the procedures. However, I believe they wanted the plane to land at Miramar so they could replace the engine where the have the facilities to do so. If he lands at Coronado they have to ship an engine and repair crew out there and that will cost a lot of money and time. Just better to have that bird back home. This decision would prove to be fatal and that is why so many heads rolled at Miramar.
5. I think that if he never talked to Miramar he would have taken ATC recommendation to land at Coronado. A lot of planes have gone down when in trouble because they tried to get back to their home base when they could have landed at a closer field but it did not have repair facilities.
6. He was fighting a plane that is designed to fly with two engines but was now pulling hard to one side with only one engine. He had to have either his right or left foot hard into his foot pedal while compensating with the stick. Not something you practice every day.
7. Accidents occur when you have two or more things go wrong. You can usually recover from one bad thing or decision but in this case they had a bad engine and a fuel transfer problem then a bad decision to bypass Coronado. You pile all that up and you end up with a tragedy.
Has anyone read http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/025685.html ?
“Pilot Error Caused SD Hornet Crash“
Defend this title please…how did the pilot cause the engine failure and fuel flow failure? Isn’t that the cause of the crash? The location of the crash is the issue causing heads to roll, but to say the *cause* was pilot error seems ridiculous to me.
After listening to the ATC recording, the thing that keeps popping up in my head is “Sh*t happens”.
One of many things that separates “do-ers” from everyone else is an understanding of that simple truth — sh*t happens.
The pilot had the situation under control — he was flying the injured a/c, it was stable and controllable, and there were good reasons to take him to Miramar. That ultimately the aircraft crashed and killed folks on the ground doesn’t make those sound decisions wrong — it just means sh*t happens sometimes and it sucks.
Losing an engine in a two-engine fighter is not the same as losing two engines in a two-engine commercial airliner, and any attempt to compare them is plain stupid.
The aviator had the a/c under control, he had power, and he had reasons to attempt Miramar. Yes it sucks that the fuel flow problem was not recognized, yet it sucks that he lost the second engine as he was lined up with the runway and headed in…but I fail to see how this can be cause to destroy careers up and down the chain of command. It only makes sense to somebody that does nothing but review the lives of those that are actually living one.
God forbid these hindsight geniuses EVER have to make a real-world decision with the standard less-than-perfect mortal lack of complete information.
That’s pretty funny, KragCulloden. “Sh*t Happens.” Aviator says it right up front, “possibly a problem with the other engine.” He knew that all the way.
Different scenario– airliner loses one of his two engines on departure: Do they find the nearest suitable runway, or do they fly it over to the nearest company maintenance base, because it’s cheaper?
For the geniuses that still don’t have this figured out — commercial airlines DO NOT equal US military.
Quit the moronic attempts to draw parallels. The military is not a safety-first culture, its a mission complete culture. Military pilots are responsible for their mission, their aircrew, and their aircraft, in that order. Civvie bus drivers and commercial entities are an entirely different ball of wax. That should not be hard to understand.…
Real example of military priorities as relayed by a participant some years ago…USN carrier wing was conducting a combined training excercise with foreign forces. Right after takeoff, an F-14 suffers hydraulic casualty and begins losing fluid rapidly — which means muscle has to take over for hydraulic assisted control surfaces, and raises problems with lower the nose gear.
The aircrew, a nuggest pilot and a veteran RIO/GIB, request to divert to the nearest land base which luckily is not too far away. They don’t get permission…so they request an emergency return to the carrier to land…also denied because the carrier is still launching for the upcoming excercise.
So the aircrew, now severely pissed, are forced to loiter in an ever-worsening F-14. Navy two-seaters don’t have dual flight controls, so the nugget is carrying the whole load and the RIO can do nothing but keep the pep-talk up and handle comms.
End result is that eventually they were walked through how to jury-jig a process to get the nose gear down, and the nugget successfully landed the crippled tomcat back on the carrier once the launches were completed.
Point — this isn’t taxi cabs of the sky — this is the military where some things are more important than safety first. The combined exercise still took place, the rest of the squadron still participated, and the tomcat was home where it could be repaired and turned around faster, and where the aircrew were immediately available for use with another craft, than if they had diverted ashore. And the nugget had some bona-fide bragging rights for the ready-room.
Just because a tragedy occurs, doesn’t necessarily mean somebody was wrong, or that something HAS to be changed. Sometimes sh*t happens and you deal with it and move on. That used to be common sense.…
Excellent post Wild Bill, except I believe this part to be inaccurate:
“6. He was fighting a plane that is designed to fly with two engines but was now pulling hard to one side with only one engine. He had to have either his right or left foot hard into his foot pedal while compensating with the stick. Not something you practice every day.“
Unless there was an issue with the flight control software, the hornet would have compensated for that automatically (or is that only in the superhornet?)
So, when the military pilot drops his busted military jet on a civie house and burns a civie family, when the military rules say he should have put down at the first available base, how does that figure in, KragCulloden?
Sh*t DOES happen, it shouldn’t happen twice, and that’s the only thing I’ve said.
Have a good one.
Krag,
Let me not overstate my qualifications. I know practically nothing about how an F-18 works. But shooter55 was given instructions by ATC to turn 060 a few seconds later ATC asked shooter to stay on that heading and shooter responded he was having trouble turning to that heading because of only one engine. ATC acknowledges his problem.
if you can’t turn left, turn 270 right.