A US Air Force F-35 pilot spent 50 minutes on an airborne conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers attempting to resolve an issue with his fighter jet before he ejected and the aircraft plunged to the ground in Alaska earlier this yr, an accident report launched this week says.
The January 28 crash at Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks was recorded in a video that confirmed the plane dropping straight down and exploding in a fireball. The pilot ejected safely, struggling solely minor accidents, however the $200 million fighter jet was destroyed.
An Air Force investigation blamed the crash on ice in the hydraulic strains in the nostril and important touchdown gears of the F-35, which prevented them from deploying correctly.
According to the report, after takeoff the pilot tried to retract the touchdown gear, however it will not achieve this fully. When decreasing it once more, it will not heart, locking on an angle to the left. Attempts to repair the touchdown gear triggered the fighter jet to suppose it was on the bottom, in the end resulting in the crash.
After going by system checklists in an try and treatment the issue, the pilot bought on a conference call with engineers from the aircraft’s producer, Lockheed Martin, because the aircraft flew close to the air base. Five engineers participated in the call, together with a senior software program engineer, a flight security engineer and three specialists in touchdown gear techniques, the report mentioned.
The pilot then tried two “touch and go” landings, the place the aircraft briefly lands, to attempt to straighten out the jammed nostril gear, the report mentioned.
But these makes an attempt didn’t recenter the nostril wheel and resulted in each the left and proper important touchdown gears freezing up and never with the ability to prolong totally to try an precise touchdown.
At that time, the F-35’s sensors indicated it was on the bottom and the jet’s laptop techniques transitioned to “automated ground-operation mode,” the report mentioned.
This triggered the fighter jet to turn out to be “uncontrollable” as a result of it was “operat(ing) as though it was on the ground when flying,” forcing the pilot to eject.
An inspection of the plane’s wreckage discovered that about one-third of the fluid in the hydraulic techniques in each the nostril and proper important touchdown gears was water, when there ought to have been none.
The investigation discovered an analogous hydraulic icing downside in one other F-35 on the similar base throughout a flight 9 days after the crash, however that plane was capable of land with out incident.
The report notes Lockheed Martin had issued steerage on the issue the F-35’s sensors had in excessive chilly climate in a upkeep publication in April 2024, about 9 months before the crash. The downside may make it “difficult for the pilot to maintain control of the aircraft,” the steerage mentioned.
The temperature on the time of the crash was -1 diploma Fahrenheit, the report mentioned.
It mentioned if the conference call contributors had referenced the 2024 upkeep publication, “they likely would have advised a planned full stop landing or a controlled ejection instead of a second touch-and-go” that finally led to the circumstances that triggered the crash, the report mentioned.
NCS has reached out to Lockheed Martin for touch upon the Air Force report.
The Air Force’s Accident Investigation Board concluded that “crew decision-making including those on the in-flight conference call,” lack of “oversight for the hazardous material program,” which oversees storage and distribution of the hydraulic fluid, and never correctly following plane hydraulics servicing procedures, all contributed to the crash.