Viper Mishap at Lake Havasu, AZ

[mcbush]

"According to the United States Air Force, an F-16C aircraft assigned to the 56th Fighter Wing at Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Arizona diverted and attempted to land at the Lake Havasu Airport around 10:30 a.m.

Officials say the aircraft departed the prepared surface and the pilot ejected. The pilot is in good condition and expected to be OK."

Link to Article

 

[BFM this]

MX is asking for a pilot to go get it, otherwise it's an OPS CNX for the morning go.

[Jaded]

Have they eliminated SFOs out of the B course syllabus, or is that on deck for the next iteration? 

[MD]

Almost the same situation as the Luke Viper that made the crash landing at Wickenburg, Az mumicipal airport a number of years back.

[Smokin]

Absolutely not saying this is the reason, but I've seen a lot of guys get too comfortable with too high of energy states during SFO's.  Not the end of the world when you have two departure end cables, but suddenly you need to divert to a civilian airfield and you could have problems.  Again, not saying that is what happened here, the SIB will tell us, but an emergency divert to an airfield like this is something to keep in mind next time you practice an SFO.

[SocialD]

Glad the pilots ok.

 

How many jets have we run off the end in situations like this and high speed aborts?  How many have been lost because there were no runways long enough within gliding distance?  Off the top of my mind I can think of 6 or 7 losses.  ...what would have been the cost of having/maintaining chutes like so many foreign buyers have?  

[matmacwc]

2 hours ago, MD said:

Almost the same situation as the Luke Viper that made the crash landing at Wickenburg, Az mumicipal airport a number of years back.

No, not really.  Wickenburg is too short, that should have never happened.

[HuggyU2]

3 hours ago, SocialD said:

How many have been lost because there were no runways long enough within gliding distance?  

But Havasu is plenty long enough, isn't it?  

[MD]

2 hours ago, matmacwc said:

No, not really.  Wickenburg is too short, that should have never happened.

In terms of a situation of having to make an emergncy divert to a civil field for a LUF jet, is what Im referring to.

[HossHarris]

Sfo’s Are a 50/50 proposition at best. The Air Force knows it. There are lots of vipers .... glad the pilot got out. 

[BolterKing]

SFOs are fun.  Spend a day at NFL and you’ll see at least a 100 being done.

[HuggyU2]

6 hours ago, HossHarris said:

Sfo’s Are a 50/50 proposition at best. The Air Force knows it. 

Hoss, I’m curious what you mean by this. Is the problem that they aren’t practiced?  

I’ve done a few on orientation rides in the Viper and they seemed really straight forward. Granted, we didn’t land on any of them. 

[HossHarris]

1 hour ago, HuggyU2 said:

Hoss, I’m curious what you mean by this. Is the problem that they aren’t practiced?  

I’ve done a few on orientation rides in the Viper and they seemed really straight forward. Granted, we didn’t land on any of them. 

Quite the opposite. They’re practiced a lot. 

 

But a lot of favorable events have to occur to dead stick a viper and successfully stop on the pavement. Proximity to a field, energy state, weather, traffic, loadout, etc. 

Even without pilot skill factored in....its about 50/50. 

[xaarman]

Normally this YouTube channel does ATC audio, but here's the Dispatch in real time:

 

[HuggyU2]

7 hours ago, HossHarris said:

Even without pilot skill factored in....its about 50/50. 

We had a U-2 guy who came from Vipers.  He lost a motor at around 25000', and I think he said he was 22 miles from China Lake.  He deadsticked it successfully.  Barely had the energy.  Good story and a nice bit of flying on his part.  

[matmacwc]

Sidebar

i was at Osan in ‘03 when the big black airplane we couldn’t talk about then lost a motor like 100 miles from base, he almost made it.  Huggy has the details....

[Seriously]

12 hours ago, HuggyU2 said:

We had a U-2 guy who came from Vipers.  He lost a motor at around 25000', and I think he said he was 22 miles from China Lake.  He deadsticked it successfully.  Barely had the energy.  Good story and a nice bit of flying on his part.  

was that gump?

[HuggyU2]

Yes, it was Gump. 

[mikezulu2016]

On 4/24/2018 at 9:58 PM, matmacwc said:

No, not really.  Wickenburg is too short, that should have never happened.

Do you know where I can find the AIB report? A quick Google search didn't turn it up. I was a controller in the RAPCON the day this happened and wanted to see what the investigation has to say. Thanks.

[Breckey]

All of the published AIBs are found here

AF FOIA Reading Room

[matmacwc]

7 hours ago, mikezulu2016 said:

Do you know where I can find the AIB report? A quick Google search didn't turn it up. I was a controller in the RAPCON the day this happened and wanted to see what the investigation has to say. Thanks.

If you’re a military controller you could make an arguement to see the SIB, if you’re a civilian you are outta luck.  AIB should be good enough.

[SocialD]

On 4/25/2018 at 1:49 AM, HuggyU2 said:

But Havasu is plenty long enough, isn't it?  

By the book, it's long enough by 1 foot...in practice, it doesn't always work.  I'm just saying that we likely could have paid for chutes many times over with the money spent on losses/repairs.  In our airspace, we're almost always out of a one-to-one, with a chute we'd like have 1 or 2 options.  Our home airport has 2 runways but only one long enough, so we're always single runway ops (read: carrying extra gas/lost training).  A chute would allow us to use the other runway and drop our bingos to give us more training time in the airspace.  Moot point now, but it seems pretty short sighted by the AF to not buy the system, when they're already making them for so many other countries.  

[ClearedHot]

Have a buddy (Vader), who lost a motor in the Viper over Iraq during a No Fly mission in the early 90's.  He was able to deadstick it back to an island as I recall.

[Hopefulflyer389]

3 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

Have a buddy (Vader), who lost a motor in the Viper over Iraq during a No Fly mission in the early 90's.  He was able to deadstick it back to an island as I recall.