F-16 Crash Lands Near Lake Havasu, Arizona. Pilot Safely Ejected.

An F-16C assigned to the 56th Fighter Wing diverted and attempted to land at Lake Havasu City Municipal Airport, Lake Havasu City, Ariz. at approximately 10:35 a.m. today during a routine training flight.

“During landing the aircraft departed the prepared surface and the pilot ejected from the aircraft. The pilot is in good condition and is being transported to Havasu Regional Medical Center,” according to a public release by the U.S. Air Force.

Luke AFB is a significant U.S. Air Force installation outside Phoenix, Arizona and is used as an F-35 and F-16 school.

A separate report passed on to us by the Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook page said:

“Lake Havasu local here, just got sent a pic at our airport of the F-16 crash landing. Came in with engine failure, pilot ejected on landing and was walking/safe. About 50 minutes ago. Not sure at originating base, it’s a city/municipal airport we have here in between DM, Luke, and Nellis. Only other info is from somebody who was listening to the local scanner before it landed and it was two F-16’s landing one with engine failure, skidded off runway after ejection, through a fence, flameout, jet ended up inside Craggy Wash which is adjacent to our airport.”

This reported incident continues what has been a series of U.S. Air Force accidents that included the fatal crash of U.S. Air Force Thunderbird Pilot, Major Stephen Del Bagno, from Valencia, California. Major Del Bagno’s fatal accident happened on April 4, 2018.

Image credit: Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook page

What we know and what we don’t know about the crash of Metrojet A321 in Egypt.

On Oct. 31, at around 04.13 UTC, Metrojet flight 7K9268, an A321 flying from Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, to St. Petersburg, Russia, crashed into the Sinai Peninsula killing all the 224 people on board.

Since the aircraft was broadcasting ADS-B data, some interesting details about the flight until the rather mysterious crash could be gathered by some receivers located in the area.

Based on such data, made available by Flightradar24.com, the aircraft was climbing to a target autopilot altitude of 32,000 feet at 407 knots when “something” happened: after a brief descent, the A321 suddenly climbed past FL320, with a significant fluctuation in vertical speed (that reaches -5760 fpm).

.@ahem_again Here’s the CSV data interpolated for time. Speed axis legend on right. There is one spike each graph. pic.twitter.com/PMRAaV5ObV

— Brian Topping (@briantopping) November 2, 2015

The aircraft, or what remained of it, then started a steep descent until it crashed into the desert.

According to the information released so far, the pilots did not radio any distress call nor did they transmit the emergency transponder code 7700: whatever happened, they had no time to use the radio.

What may have happened is subject to speculations.

ISIS claimed to have downed the plane with MANPADS (Man Portable Air Defense Systems), something nearly impossible, despite the fact that the overflown territory is the scene of fighting between Egyptian security forces and terrorists, considered that the aircraft was flying well above the envelope of such systems.

For sure a surface-to-air missile could have reached the altitude of the Metrojet flight but it’s not clear whether SAM batteries are located within firing range.

Although the airline has claimed the aircraft was in perfect conditions, a structural collapse can’t be completely ruled out; actually investigators believe this to be less likely as the aircraft broke into two main parts only.

Metrojet said that they believe the aircraft broke as a consequence of a mechanical force acting on the aircraft a version coherent with several scenarios: from the mid-air collision with something (unlikely, since there would be debris of two aircraft..) to the missile, along with the already mentioned collapse and missile.

Some piece of debris has outer edges bent outwards, suggesting an explosion from the inside of the aircraft, as the one caused by a bomb. According to the media reports, this is the most likely cause of the incident for some of the investigators.

Although there is no direct evidence of any terrorist involvement yet, nothing can be ruled out a priori.

Image credit: Flightradar24.com

 

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Free Libya Air Force Mig-21 crashed into city blocks at Tobruk, in eastern Libya.

On Sept. 2, a Mig-21 belonging to the Free Libya Air Force crashed into Tobruk killing the pilot and at least a small boy on the ground.

The entire scene was filmed from a rooftop in Tobruk: the aircraft seems to be initially nose-diving, then the pilot pulls up again and the aircraft overflies the cameraman in what seems to be a climb, just before it dives again and crashes between buildings causing a huge explosion.

Needless to say the reasons of the crash are still unknown even if according to some news reports, sources pointed towards the mechanical failure.

According to RT, the pilot has been identified as Rafa Al-Farani and the he crashed in his Mig-21bis while performing in a memorial flypast for another pilot, Ibrahim Al-Manifi, who was also killed in a plane crash few days ago.

This seems to explain the reason why someone was filming the plane from a rooftop at the time of the crash.

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News reports have come in the afternoon of Jul. 3 that two RAF Tornado GR4 aircraft have crashed into the Moray Firth off the Eastern coast of Scotland.

The RNLI (Coastguard) has released information that two aircrew have been rescued from the water and have been flown to hospital in Inverness whereas the two remaining aircrew remain at the time of writing missing.

The incident is thought to have taken place shortly before 13.50 local time as this was when the alarm was raised and shortly after an RAF SAR helicopter plucked the pair of flyers from the sea.

Three lifeboats have been searching an area 25 miles (40km) south of Wick in the Beatrice Oil Field, which has an oil platform and a gas platform along with two experimental offshore wind turbines.

No further details have been released at this time.

A mid-air collision must be considered among the possible causes of the incident.

Richard Clements for TheAviationist.com

Image credit: Jez B/Flickr

Update Mar. 21 18.20 GMT

An AH-64 Apache helicopter crashes into the ground after performing a fiesler-like maneuver at low altitude over the troops in the mountains of Afghanistan. Maybe it’s not a “crazy” maneuver as someone judged it, but still dangerous.

According to the information released along with the video, both the pilot and co-pilot/gunner survived the crash and no one on the ground was injured.

A later statement confirmed the crash occurred on Feb. 6, 2012 in the Paktika province and involved a 1-227 AvCav Regiment from FOB Sharana.

This accident reminded me of the famous Italian NH-90 helicopter that crashed in the Bracciano Lake in 2008: more or less same maneuver and same outcome. In that case, the surface of the water played a role but at least the chopper was performing during an airshow and was flown by a crew of pilots qualified for aerobatics.