F-16 Crashes in Arizona Desert

[REP0MAN]

Luke AFB F-16 has crashed about 100 miles Northwest of Luke AFB. Jet was on a training sortie. Pilot still unaccounted for.

http://www.azcentral.com/community/glendale/articles/0314f16-crash0314-ON.html

Praying for good news....

[Maverick]

I hope they find him safe and sound.

[NUKE]

Hope he's okay.

We sure seem to have had a lot of them going down over the past few years  here.

[wrongwayric]

If it was used in desert storm and such actions its suspect as being structurally sound. Most planes flew over there design capabilities as far as weight, G's, and over stresses. A lot of the planes that were involved in overseas action have stress fractures and not all are detected before becoming catastrophic. This is just one of many reasons the airforce and other branches are putting a rush on getting the F22 and other planes faster than anticipated. Hope the pilot made it but usually after 30 min. if it's an over land ejection and no word the worst is assumed.

[LePaul]

If it was used in desert storm and such actions its suspect as being structurally sound. Most planes flew over there design capabilities as far as weight, G's, and over stresses. A lot of the planes that were involved in overseas action have stress fractures and not all are detected before becoming catastrophic. This is just one of many reasons the airforce and other branches are putting a rush on getting the F22 and other planes faster than anticipated. Hope the pilot made it but usually after 30 min. if it's an over land ejection and no word the worst is assumed.

I love to see you document and back up this doozie of a statement.

[REP0MAN]

Without getting too far off the mark here.....

I highly doubt this specific plane saw time over there. Luke is a training facility. The planes, I would assume, stay put.

Putting the train back on the tracks....

They found him. He is deceased. God Bless this pilot and his family.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0315lukepilot-ON.html

[RTR]

Sad news indeed.

Wrongway, you are living up to your handle.

RTR

[AquaShrimp]

I know its cliche, but in air-to-air training, pilots have to make decisions in fractions of a second.  Sometimes the amount of time for a decision isn't even enough to allow the pilot to pull the ejection handle.

Wrongwayric is right about stress fractures.  My profession is non-destructive testing.  The air force does allow its planes to have cracks in the wings, as long as they are under a certain length.  The Navy however, does not.

[LePaul]

I'll kindly wait til the investigators have had a chance to examine the wreckage and see what happened.  We're also talking about a student pilot...so there is many, many things that could have been a factor.

[AWMac]

Prayers to the young pilots Family and Friends.

Sad news.

Mac

[wrongwayric]

Sad to hear he was killed. It's very easy to do the research for my statement just google for it you can find it yourself. Also as stated by someone else yes airforce allows planes with small stress cracks in certain areas to still fly. Navy/Marines as stated do not because of the carrier enviroment. The stress crack issue was a major headline story a couple years ago because of some very public crashes. Not sure how the airforce training squadrons are run but in the Navy/Marine squadron i was attached to, VMFAT-125 NAS Lemoore CA, they had every F18 from the A to the D when i was there. The older planes came from fleet squadrons both navy and marine (A thru C) at the time. When i got out we had just taken possesion of 4 brand new straight from the factory D's. Every training pilot would have flight time in each of those aircraft before he left.

[Maverick]

RIP Lt.

For all of you armchair experts who are already determining what caused the crash, why don't you get off of your high chair and let the professionals determine what actually happened. After all they will have access to maintenance records, pilot evaluations and medical data in addition to the actual scene and wreckage. You know what I mean, real evidence not imagination and pure out of the butt crack speculation. The crash might have had absolutely nothing to do with the condition of the aircraft.

[MajWoody]

.

[eagl]

I lost a good friend last June in an F-15 crash off the coast of Oregon. The investigators make two reports in their investigations. One is made public. The other is classified & will never be revealed. If it was a structural failure or something similar, the Family & public will never find out. It will be "officially" called pilot error.

That's simply not true, except for the part implying there are two investigations, which is in fact how these things work.

I'm sorry you lost a friend, but your understanding of the mishap investigation process is not correct.

[MajWoody]

Eagl, You have a pm