US Air Force F-35 crashes after pilot's 50-minute conference call with Lockheed engineers

[midian182]

Facepalm: Most people are familiar with the frustration of sitting through a lengthy conference call only to reach a disappointing outcome. A US Air Force F-35 pilot must have been particularly upset after his 50-minute airborne call with Lockheed Martin engineers did little to prevent the plane plunging to the ground soon afterward. Thankfully for the airman, he ejected safely before being incinerated in a fireball.

On January 28, a pilot flying the F-35 experienced an in-flight malfunction during a training mission at Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks. As you can see in the video, it caused the $200 million fighter jet to tumble to the ground and explode. The pilot ejected and suffered only minor injuries.

According to the report, the pilot tried to retract the plane's landing gear after it had taken off but it wasn't retracting completely. He then tried to lower the gear, at which point it got stuck at an angle.

After running through a system checklist that failed to fix the problem, the pilot decided he needed expert help, so he started a conference call with five engineers from the plane's manufacturer, Lockheed Martin.

CNN reports that the pilot was speaking to a senior software engineer, a flight safety engineer, and three specialists in landing gear systems for almost an hour, but it seems even they weren't able to help.

The pilot then tried two "touch and go" landings, which involved the plane briefly landing to try and straighten out the jammed nose gear.

But the two touch and go landings made things even worse. Not only was the nose wheel still off center, but the left and right main landing gears had now frozen and were unable to extend fully for a standard landing.

This caused the plane's sensors to believe it was on the ground, moving the systems into "automated ground-operation mode" and causing the plane to become uncontrollable. The pilot then made the decision to eject.

An investigation found that the problem was due to ice in the hydraulic lines in the nose and main landing gears of the F-35, preventing them from properly deploying. It appears that the hydraulic system was mistakenly partly filled with water.

About one-third of the fluid in the hydraulic systems in both the nose and right main landing gear was water. There should have been none due to the extremely low temperatures planes are exposed to at altitudes. CNN writes that it was -1 degree Fahrenheit on the day of the crash.

Nine days later, another F-35 flown at the same base also experienced a hydraulic issue caused by icing, but it was able to land safely.

The Air Force's Accident Investigation Board blamed those on the conference call, lack of oversight when it came to storage and distribution of the hydraulic fluid, and not properly following aircraft hydraulics servicing procedures for the crash.

The report notes that if the engineers had followed guidance set out in a 2024 maintenance update, which was discussed during the conference call, "they likely would have advised a planned full stop landing or a controlled ejection instead of a second touch-and-go."

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US Air Force F-35 crashes after pilot's 50-minute conference call with Lockheed engineers

 

[VitalyT]

It was a news 7 months ago. Republishing it today with the findings that say the tech support screwed up is hardly the news worth publishing here.

 

[scavengerspc]

Looks like tech support is worthless EVERYWHERE. Not really surprised.
I can joke because thankfully the pilot is ok.

Plus, $200 million for an F35? That is a bargain!

 

[KedsDead]

Looks like tech support is worthless EVERYWHERE. Not really surprised.
I can joke because thankfully the pilot is ok.

Plus, $200 million for an F35? That is a bargain!

That is probably what it actually costs. Then there is the screwing the tax payer mark up.

 

[Megalomaniac]

It's a tremendous waste of money.
It was supposed to be our export fighter so that foreign countries could buy a taste of the F-22. But the reality is, they don't want it. We let Russia invade Ukraine to scare the foreign countries into buying it. They still don't want it.

The F35 is not a "jet". It's a program. It's a very expensive program. Maintenance takes more time than the jet is in the air.

Europe flies older planes with upgrades to use newer weapons and saves a lot of money. America is $37,000,000,000,000 in debt.

I'd also like to point out that the F-35 has proven just how ineffective it is in the fact that we can't simply give them or even sell them to countries under attack like Ukraine. We needed to bring Ukrainian pilots to America to train them to fight in the old F-16 we gave them and that took a long time - but on top of that, they can't even fly them in that airspace due to the surface to missile tech of the S400 being good enough to threaten them. There was a risk the F-35 tech could fall into enemy hands making them even more problematic to risk in an active warzone.

Understand: America is really good making weapons to beat up on countries without air defenses and marginally effective air forces. But the moment we have to fight a country like Russia or China is when the rhetoric tones down.

We NEVER would have pulled off that B2 bombing raid in Iran with China or Russia.

Tom Cruise/ Hollywood made you think it was doable, but in real life it ain't - and you don't come home.

As for the icing problem, it's also a huge problem (ice FOD) with the F-16. Russia's aircraft were designed with ice and other FOD in mind.

If you're operating out of Alaska, you should be ready for ice fod.

The F-35 is a one size fits all jack of all trades but master of none.

 

[Rudyduu]

I don't see how anyone is blaming the engineers on the phone when hydraulics on an aircraft shouldn't have any water in it, just like the article said.

Additionally, to the guy complaining about costs, it's not as if the money is coming out of your pocket and wouldn't be used for anything else. Developing new technology is part of the cost of manufacturing new technology.

 

[mbk34]

Did they try turning it off and on?

It's no wonder many European nations are looking to move to cheaper aircraft that are easier and cheaper to keep in the air. I read somewhere that it costs $40K/hour to fly one of these things but only $4K/hour for something like the Gripen fighter.

 

[opckieran]

to the guy complaining about costs, it's not as if the money is coming out of your pocket and wouldn't be used for anything else. Developing new technology is part of the cost of manufacturing new technology.

It is actually coming out of our pockets, and call us crazy but we prefer our tax dollars not be wasted on silly mistakes like this on a vastly overpriced joke called the F35 program to begin with…

 

[Theinsanegamer]

It's a tremendous waste of money.
It was supposed to be our export fighter so that foreign countries could buy a taste of the F-22. But the reality is, they don't want it. We let Russia invade Ukraine to scare the foreign countries into buying it. They still don't want it.

The F35 is not a "jet". It's a program. It's a very expensive program. Maintenance takes more time than the jet is in the air.

Europe flies older planes with upgrades to use newer weapons and saves a lot of money. America is $37,000,000,000,000 in debt.

I'd also like to point out that the F-35 has proven just how ineffective it is in the fact that we can't simply give them or even sell them to countries under attack like Ukraine. We needed to bring Ukrainian pilots to America to train them to fight in the old F-16 we gave them and that took a long time - but on top of that, they can't even fly them in that airspace due to the surface to missile tech of the S400 being good enough to threaten them. There was a risk the F-35 tech could fall into enemy hands making them even more problematic to risk in an active warzone.

Understand: America is really good making weapons to beat up on countries without air defenses and marginally effective air forces. But the moment we have to fight a country like Russia or China is when the rhetoric tones down.

We NEVER would have pulled off that B2 bombing raid in Iran with China or Russia.

Tom Cruise/ Hollywood made you think it was doable, but in real life it ain't - and you don't come home.

As for the icing problem, it's also a huge problem (ice FOD) with the F-16. Russia's aircraft were designed with ice and other FOD in mind.

If you're operating out of Alaska, you should be ready for ice fod.

The F-35 is a one size fits all jack of all trades but master of none.

Man, this reads like Pierre spray came back to life!

Let's be clear, US tech has met Russian tech before. In the Gulf War. And said russian tech got BTFOd back to the stone age. The Chinese tech is knockoff Russian tech, and the Indians found out the hard way that said "durable" Russian tech was actually garbage in their spat with China. Meanwhile Russian aircraft are getting shot down by anti air tech from the 80s that doesnt even have GPS support, being run by an underfunded, understaffed, corrupt ukraine. Anything newer then what the Soviets were pumping out is completely MIA because Russia cannot build them, same with the T-14 copemada.

The reason the EU is looking at cheaper tech is simple: they cant afford to maintain their own militaries. NATO would collapse without the US and the individual states have almost nothing to their name. Literal handfuls of tanks and planes, thats it. Poland could steamroll most of the EU. And they'll make hay about how the Gripen can beat the F-35 in a dogfight......while ignoring that in an actual conflict, said Gripen would be shot down by a missile from hundreds of miles away before it even knew the F-35 was in the same hemisphere.

Oh yeah, and by the end of 2024 the US had already sold over 1100 F-35s to various states. As of the latest confirmed purchases, the US has sold F-35s to the following countries: Japan (105 F-35A, 42 F-35B), the United Kingdom (48 F-35B, with plans for 74), Italy (75 F-35A, 40 F-35B), South Korea (60 F-35A), Australia (72 F-35A), the Netherlands (52 F-35A), Norway (52 F-35A), Israel (75 F-35I), Denmark (27 F-35A), Belgium (34 F-35A), Poland (32 F-35A), Singapore (8 F-35A, 12 F-35B), Finland (64 F-35A), Canada (88 F-35A), Switzerland (36 F-35A), Germany (35 F-35A), the Czech Republic (24 F-35A), Greece (20 F-35A, with potential for up to 40), and Romania (32 F-35A, with potential for up to 48).

 

[DrSuess]

Tech support did what it was supposed to do, which is help troubleshoot the problem and find potential solutions which they did. "About one-third of the fluid in the hydraulic systems in both the nose and right main landing gear was water". This is a problem no tech support wasn't going to fix. Troubleshooting a hardware problem with the landing gear is difficult without having direct access to the landing gear.

As far as the plane thinking it is in a weight on wheels situation and shutting down flight control systems that sounds like a design flaw if there is no way to override that situation.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Tech support did what it was supposed to do, which is help troubleshoot the problem and find potential solutions which they did. "About one-third of the fluid in the hydraulic systems in both the nose and right main landing gear was water". This is a problem no tech support wasn't going to fix. Troubleshooting a hardware problem with the landing gear is difficult without having direct access to the landing gear.

As far as the plane thinking it is in a weight on wheels situation and shutting down flight control systems that sounds like a design flaw if there is no way to override that situation.

It was five engineers from the plane's manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, not "tech support."

 

[hahahanoobs]

I don't see how anyone is blaming the engineers on the phone when hydraulics on an aircraft shouldn't have any water in it, just like the article said.

Last paragraph...

 

[Megalomaniac]

I don't see how anyone is blaming the engineers on the phone when hydraulics on an aircraft shouldn't have any water in it, just like the article said.

Additionally, to the guy complaining about costs, it's not as if the money is coming out of your pocket and wouldn't be used for anything else. Developing new technology is part of the cost of manufacturing new technology.

We have this thing called "taxes"...

 

[YouShallNotPass]

Why don't they give a parachute to this $200 million fighter jet?

 

[p51d007]

F-35 is the JOKE of aviation. It was "suppose" to replace the A-10 Thunderbolt II as a ground support plane, but it can't even fly straight, not to mention you could probably throw a rock at it and knock it out of the air. And what is the military doing now? RETIRING the A-10, one of the best low level ground support attack aircraft ever built in the last 50 years. From everything I've heard the "ground guys" love the A-10 and now it's being retired to AMARC. They almost retired it once before in 1990...but the "gulf war" came along and it showed how GOOD it was.

 

[Megalomaniac]

I actually am a pilot. Fixed wing Cessna, Citation and Cirrus - but I want to get into rotary wing (heli) eventually. Sometimes I wish I could get behind the controls of one of these stealth fighters. But then I remember, these things are just one computer glitch away from destroying themselves - and you with them.

 

[WaphleStomp]

The F-35 is doomed. It has been a failure from the start; too complicated and too difficult to control. This has been reported numerous times since the first test flights. But they're not willing to call a spade a spade. Instead, they double down and continue to throw good money after bad.
Ok, I'm done with the idioms.
The planes are too expensive and the US wants to maintain control of the tech within the planes they sell to other nations, which would provide them the ability to disable it on a whim.
They need to scrap the F-35 program and start from scratch. Sadly, some fool will insist on solutions: 1) having AI fly the F-35, 2) flying them remotely, 3) designing an entirely new aircraft with AI - all of these are doomed to fail.
Start from scratch, make the aircraft flyable, fast, responsive, and well-protected. Let the pilots do what they're trained to do - fly the aircraft.

 

[Godel]

According to perplexity.ai The fly away cost of an F35A is just over $80 million USD.

Some other variants range up to $110 million. The $200 million figure quoted probably includes each planes' share of the total development costs.

 

[BogdanR]

Should we offer our thoughts and prayers?

 

[dmoros]

Pilot: "Hey the landing Gear did not retract fully and is unresponsive"
Engineers: "have you tried unplugging it counting to ten and then plugging it back up?"

 

[MrCommunistGen]

> Thankfully for the airman, he ejected safely before being incinerated in a fireball.

This makes it sound like he ejected safely but then he was incinerated anyway. Instead:
Thankfully for the airman, he ejected safely and was not incinerated in a fireball when the aircraft ultimately crashed.

 

[RaXelliX]

Plus, $200 million for an F35? That is a bargain!

80 million.

F-35 is the JOKE of aviation. It was "suppose" to replace the A-10 Thunderbolt II as a ground support plane, but it can't even fly straight, not to mention you could probably throw a rock at it and knock it out of the air.

No it was not. F-35 is a multipurpose fighter. A-10 is a ground attack aircraft. It's called F-35, not A-35 for a reason.

And what is the military doing now? RETIRING the A-10, one of the best low level ground support attack aircraft ever built in the last 50 years. From everything I've heard the "ground guys" love the A-10 and now it's being retired to AMARC.

It's too slow to fly in contested airspace against near-peer adversaries. It's very good at what it does, but I cant get close enough in today's day and age. The best it can do today is carry large number of weapon pods to shoot down enemy drones and perhaps cruise missiles at the rear.

The F-35 is doomed. It has been a failure from the start; too complicated and too difficult to control. This has been reported numerous times since the first test flights. But they're not willing to call a spade a spade. Instead, they double down and continue to throw good money after bad.

If 1100+ built as the most numerous stealth fighter on planet is what "doomed" is called then sign me up.

The planes are too expensive and the US wants to maintain control of the tech within the planes they sell to other nations, which would provide them the ability to disable it on a whim.

Planes are expensive, period. Actually bombers are the most expensive per flight hour with B1B Lancer or "Bone" as it's called topping the chart. I dont see anyone calling US to scrap it's bomber fleet because it's so damn expensive.

They need to scrap the F-35 program and start from scratch. Sadly, some fool will insist on solutions: 1) having AI fly the F-35, 2) flying them remotely, 3) designing an entirely new aircraft with AI - all of these are doomed to fail.
Start from scratch, make the aircraft flyable, fast, responsive, and well-protected. Let the pilots do what they're trained to do - fly the aircraft.

Oh great. So people like you can again complain about cost overrides, technical problems and high initial per unit price again?

F-35 is a proven design with manageable costs and is upgradeable. More than 1100 built and many exported. Despite the naysayers it's resounding success with high safety record (vs number built and operated) and high availability (for a stealth aircraft).

According to perplexity.ai The fly away cost of an F35A is just over $80 million USD.

Some other variants range up to $110 million. The $200 million figure quoted probably includes each planes' share of the total development costs.

Exactly. People just quote the initial, bigger number because it makes the plane look worse, but as production has ramped up the price has come down.

 

[scavengerspc]

80 million

Ok, thanks for the info sir, but I quoted the article:
"As you can see in the video, it caused the $200 million fighter jet to tumble to the ground and explode."

But really, that just sells me even more on the F-35.
It has been serving well for something like 2 decades.