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Mechanical breakdowns compounded by human error led to the crash of a US marine jet in December that killed four people on the ground, the marines said. The jet was having engine problems and attempting to land at Miramar air base in San Diego when it crashed…
The F-18 fighter jet destroyed two houses in suburban San Diego after the pilot ejected out of the aircraft when it lost power approaching Miramar air base. Four members of one family were killed, including two babies, their mother and their grandmother, who was visiting from South Korea.
The right engine of the plane gave out with an oil leak shortly after it took off from the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on a training flight, marine Col John Rupp told a news briefing.
Instead of opting to land at Naval Air Station North Island, on the tip of a peninsula in San Diego Bay, the pilot attempted to make it to Miramar Marine Corps Air Station – several miles inland with residential communities nearby.
North Island is approached over water and there are fewer buildings to hit if things go wrong. Air traffic controllers told the pilot three times that he was cleared to land at North Island, flight tapes released by the Federal Aviation Administration revealed.
As the jet approached Miramar, its other engine failed and the pilot safely ejected.
The pilot is grounded. No statement about what discipline he’ll receive.
Not much of a hero was he?
Wonder how good he would be in another 20 years experience? Course, I’m just assuming.
Most “stupid” military accidents are by desk jockeys who fly minimal time just to qualify for flight pay===a huge waste of money/time/capability for the military services and the taxpayer. Fun though.
Bet he wanted to land where he took off/where his car was parked?
vehicular manslaughter anyone?
🙂
bobbo,
The read says he took off from the aircraft carrier, I doubt he was parked out there.
#3–Rick==I lose my bet then. Thanks. I’ll go RTFA now, but they are always disappointing from lack of detail.
I’ll make another bet: most pilots will take the recommendations of ground control unless they are in panic mode and target fixated.
Old saying about twin engine aircraft: when they lose one engine the pilot still acts as if he has two and flies into areas that a single engine pilot never would.
Love to hear his explanation.
I lived on that base through several crashes.
One splattered across the state route at the end of the runway (now Interstate 15). (F14)
Two splattered into the landfill (dump) on the south side of the runway. (F14)
One Blue Angels pilot burrowed into the main runway. (A4)
PSA Flight 182 hit by a small plane and went down on University Blvd and vaporized a guy’s family that I worked with.
Bottom line, planes crash, and they can crash anywhere they fly over at any time they fly over.
Don’t want to die in a plane crash? Don’t live anywhere they fly and don’t get on one. Same goes with cars.
I sure as hell would like to know why he decided to try and make it Miramar but depending on the AO for the carrier it may have been a lot closer to him at the time and he thought it was an acceptable risk.
But like bobbo I would like to hear it first….
I bet the guys at Fox news are going to blame the S. Koreans killed in the accident.
Hmm,
Recalling No Agenda last week–last one was an Airbus, this one a Boeing, no? Anybody else becoming a little nervous?
#6 Angel
More correctly it was the Soviets targetting the F18 out of Vladivostok in order to kill the Koreans on the ground.
They let Marines fly? That was the problem right there. 🙂
Damn jarhead mentality, I’m sure he was convinced he was going to make it to Miramar. Right up to the moment he had to bail out. Never say die, gung-ho bullshit, is the corps mentality. His pilot career should be over, criminal charges pending, we’ll be lucky if they don’t pin a medal on him.
[Comment deleted – Violation of Posting Guidelines. – ed.]
I’m not sure about the regulations that were in place before this incident, but I love the Corps response of reprimanding everyone the pilot talked to that day, but doing nothing to the pilot to date. It will be interesting to see his testimony at the board of inquiry.
Don
Isn’t there a class for aviators that says it’s a piece of equipment. When it fails in the air, your first responsibility, if possible, is to park it on the ground where it can do no harm, then bail.
McCain showed us, by example, that the equipment is disposable. You don’t get promoted on the basis of saving broken gear, but you sure as hell lose your career by wiping out housing developments.
Is it possible he didn’t want to land at a Naval base?
Service rivalry causing an unnecessary risk?
Always good to see liberals showing their true colors as soldier-haters…
There’s no excuse for this. Safety protocols in San Diego for decades demand that if you flame out at sea you either try for North Island, Pendleton, or Imperial Beach, whose approaches are away from populated areas. I think the pilot was worried about getting wet and instead tried to limp all the way to Miramar and failed.
#15, Such hate! Such Stupidity!. Such a typical military wing nut denier!
The pilot didn’t follow protocol. He flew a crippled airplane over a populated area when he was instructed to fly to North Island. There is nothing in that for anyone to imply that they hate the military.
Yes, there are several snide remarks about other countries being responsible or blamed. None of them though have cast a blanket assertion on the military. Well one post was a typical inter service rivalry jab, if that counts.
So Billy Bob, ya simply blew this one.
If anyone is interested here is the ATC tape of the accident.
Check out Google earth of Miramar and you see clearly why it was a bad decision when the landing strip at Coronado was more accessible, was located on an island surrounded by water and no civilian houses nearby. But don’t feel bad Marines, the USAF screws up too.
At Tinker AFB there have been 2 major crashes of note, an A7 corsair essentially did exactly what this plane did, flamed out and dropped almost straight down on top of a house, and a B-52 crash took out an entire neighborhood which was never rebuilt and is to this day cordoned of with scary no trespassing signs.
Its curious why he didn’t just ditch it, maybe in this economic shortfall he was concerned they would stick him with the $30 million dollar replacement cost?
#17 GigG
Thanks for the headsup on the tape. I had mentioned earlier he may have been closer to MCAS Miramar than NAS North Island.
This fighter jock was CLEARLY south a NAS NI when he called an emergency to the tower so based on the fact that he flew approx. 18 miles before crashing and he was only 10 miles away from NAS NI I’d have to cite pilot error on this one no matter who did the engine work or said there was a problem.
He could have easily dropped her into the ocean doing a straight in approach but no, he dropped it on a house exhibiting poor judgment and his career as he knows it is most likely over.
I have the utmost respect for the fighter pilots.
1. FYI, in the military desk jockey is someone who is not a pilot or other such thing (depending on the aircraft).
Military pilots who are “desk jockeys” (as you’re calling them) are pretty much your higher ranking officers. They do minimal flight time because their current job demands them to do other things (i.e. Commander of a Carrier Group).
Using your definition of “desk jockey”, they are typically your most experienced pilots. But yes, they do keep flying periodically so as to not lose their flight pay.
I directly worked for an O-8 who did just that when I was deployed in the Persian Gulf. It’s a common practice as you have noted. Hazardous duty pay is another one. As well as flight deck pay.
One caveat though, everyone who should get flight deck pay often times did not from my personal observations. I think it was because there was an allowance for how many personnel in the squadron were allowed on the flight deck (and this was probably used to limit how much available funds there were for flight deck pay per squadron)…. sorry memory getting rusty here.
So rather than letting those who did the most work on the flight deck get this pay, this was (and probably still is) often relegated to the more senior enlisted people (who happened to do the least amount of work on the flight deck if at all). Often times Maintenance Chiefs in the squadrons would take the pay by doing the ever so scarce visit to the flight deck. Lower enlisted people got nothing often times.
Maybe he was flying a borrowed ‘plane and didn’t want to scratch the paint.
#19–Deisel==I listened once to the tape. Wasn’t he on a heading of 090 and told he was going to overfly the North Island to get to Miramar?
Every pilot will try to LAND the aircraft when they have flight controls/elevation. Every pilot should think about the safety of ground personnel. What this idiot did was OVERFLY one safe station to get to one farther away that was unsafe.
I’d still love to know why. He wasn’t panicked and I didn’t hear the ground station clear him to land at NI. I relistened. He was talking to someone on the ground about the situation. I can see maintenance saying to take it to Miramar but the pilot should have landed ASAP which would have also been the safest location. Sad. Ground control was excellent as usual.
#22 bobbo
That’s what it sounded like to me. I don’t really care who he was talking to at the time he should have dropped her down and tried for NI.
As usual we are all just second guessing the guy actually in the seat.
Still sad…….
Sonny you seem to have a reading comprehension problem.
It’ll be interesting to read the NTSB report.
So I guess the moral of the story is, if you work hard, reguardless of where you come from. You can make a name for yourself?
#24, Billy Boob,
It seems you have not only a reading problem, but an overall general intelligent problem.