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Viper crash at Holloman, pilot ejected safely.


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Thankfully the pilot is fine.

standby for a safety down day?

 

A U.S. Air Force F-16 Viper assigned to the 49th Wing crashed during landing at Holloman AFB at approximately 1800 MDT today. The sole pilot on board successfully ejected and is currently being treated for minor injuries.

Emergency responders are on scene; additional details will be released as they become available.”

 

 

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What does it take for the AF leadership to actually make a change to save lives?  6-9 more crashes in the next 6 weeks again ?  
 

All they do is justify all of these cuts by saying technology is taking over when in reality it isn’t.  The mission sets we have been doing in the last 10 years have drastically made more complex.  Technology makes it harder sometimes to do the mission because there is so much crap going on.  And then we cut the hours for the new guys and expect them to keep up.  
 

also not sure if that is related to this crash.  This is talking in general. 

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We have a shitload of SIIs right now...so by definition how special are they? And most of them are things like do a good preflight, have discipline, how to take a piss in the jet.  These are MAJCOM leadership’s answers to increasing safety. What in the wide world of sports is going on here!

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Sure, I'll speak the quiet part: It's an insidious, but ultimately purposeful greening of the force, combined with inherited legacy fleet age issues. Planets align as they're destined to, and you get the swiss cheese thing and people die. Big blue has a number they're willing to tolerate while gaslighting you with bullshit SIIs; they're just not gonna tell ya what that number is. So check six, and internalize what you signed up for when you agreed to this shit. No right or wrong answer as far as quitting, but folks better understand what the they got themselves into. 

 

 

Edited by hindsight2020
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Last FY the USAF tied its previous best year with two aviation related fatalities (one of which was a parachutist) and the USAF had the least number of destroyed aircraft from aviation accidents in USAF history. Just wanted to throw that out there. 
 

 

Edited by Lifer
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27 minutes ago, Lifer said:

Last FY was tied for the lowest number of aviation fatalities with two fatalities (one of which was a parachutist) and the least number of destroyed aircraft in USAF history. Just wanted to through that out there. 

That does not negate the fact that we have had a heinous May-July '20. We have a trend now. The item in question now is defining the threshold of mishaps before *they* do something to tacitly address it ($/time). 

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Well that’s interesting. If I was high speed and thought I didn’t have directional control in a lawn dart I’d probably punch too, especially when your bro just died 2 weeks ago. Those things roll over at like 6.9 knots/not being on pavement, whichever occurs first. 

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14 hours ago, norskman said:

That does not negate the fact that we have had a heinous May-July '20. We have a trend now. The item in question now is defining the threshold of mishaps before *they* do something to tacitly address it ($/time). 

Historically spring and summer are worse for mishaps compared to winter and fall for instance. I’m not saying this year is a banner year by any means but so far it’s about average. The ten year average for aviation fatalities is 8.9/year and we are at 7 and we averaged 18.4 destroyed aircraft per year in the past 10 years and so far this year we have 10. Granted we have 2.5 months left but so far this year seems about average. I’m not saying we should be happy with average.  We need to thoroughly investigate all mishaps and come up with solid recommendations while looking for and eliminating trends which I feel like we are doing. When I mentioned in my previous post that last year was the best year we’ve ever had for fatalities and destroyed aircraft I was providing some facts to counter a previous post about how our mishap rates are higher due to aging aircraft and inexperienced aircrews. I just don’t see that in the data. Yes we had more Class As last year than in the past but that is contributed to 5 gen fighters costing more to fix. I guess my point is it’s a little too early to say we are having a trend yet in my opinion based on the data I see. 
 

 

Edited by Lifer
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1 hour ago, Lifer said:

Historically spring and summer are worse for mishaps compared to winter and fall for instance. I’m not saying this year is a banner year by any means but so far it’s about average. The ten year average for aviation fatalities is 8.9/year and we are at 7 and we averaged 18.4 destroyed aircraft per year in the past 10 years and so far this year we have 10. Granted we have 2.5 months left but so far this year seems about average. I’m not saying we should be happy with average.  We need to thoroughly investigate all mishaps and come up with solid recommendations while looking for and eliminating trends which I feel like we are doing. When I mentioned in my previous post that last year was the best year we’ve ever had for fatalities and destroyed aircraft I was providing some facts to counter a previous post about how our mishap rates are higher due to aging aircraft and inexperienced aircrews. I just don’t see that in the data. Yes we had more Class As last year than in the past but that is contributed to 5 gen fighters costing more to fix. I guess my point is it’s a little too early to say we are having a trend yet in my opinion based on the data I see. 
 

 

So, you're saying that it might be a little too early to blame UPT 2.5 for this?

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I don't have numbers to back it up, but just by my experience we have a record low 90 day lookback overall for fighters combined with a record low total experience.  That in and of itself is something to be very concerned about.  Even the first assignment guy who deployed twice and may have 800 hours, how many sorties does that equal for him when half that time was spent in a in a CAP or a wheel?  Deployed experience is good for a pilot, but one deployed 6 hr sortie doesn't always replace the 4 sorties the same hours would represent, especially if that sortie was 6 hours of turning while doing very little.  Then take the average first assignment dude who probably has less than 200 hours (or the brand new guy who just showed up from the B-course with all of 69 hours) and fly him at half the RAP rate for a couple months due to this near standdown for COVID while many of the experienced IPs have jumped ship and you have a recipe for disaster.

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