A Royal Thai Air Force JAS-39 Gripen has crashed in Thailand. Pilot dead.
On Jan. 14, at 09.27 LT, a RTAF JAS-39 Gripen crashed at Hat Yai Airport, Thailand, during an airshow for Thailand’s national Children’s Day.
The 35-year-old pilot who was flying the Swedish-made jet did not eject and died in the incident.
Footage of the accident shows the Gripen starting a slow aileron roll; once inverted, the aircraft fails to complete the maneuver, stops rolling and takes a nosedive crashing near the airfield’s runway.
Thailand purchased 12 JAS-39C/D Gripen multirole jets in 2008, at a cost of about 70M USD apiece.
David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.
Among the showcased weapons there is also the rarely seen GBU-56 Laser JDAM with the BLU-109 penetrator weapon, which replaced the legacy GBU-24 Paveway III. After an eventful nine-month deployment, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower […]
The 142nd Wing received its first two F-15EX Eagle II jets, beginning the replacement of the unit’s existing fleet of F-15Cs. As we reported last month, the 142nd Wing at Portland Air National Guard Base […]
The air-launched SM-6, designated AIM-174B, is significantly larger than the AIM-120 AMRAAM missile. As reported in detail recently, F/A-18E/F Super Hornets deployed with CVW-2 aboard USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier were photographed at Joint Base […]