Air Force probes crash of F-16 on Nellis runway

Stephen Curran

Monday, March 21, 2005 | 8:41 a.m.

An Air Force safety board is expected to review Friday's crash of an F-16CJ fighter on a Nellis Air Force Base runway.

The pilot of the $18.8 million dollar aircraft, whose name and rank were not released Friday, suffered minor injuries in the crash, which occurred when the plane landed short of the runway about 8:30 Friday morning, Capt. Maureen Schumann, a Nellis spokeswoman, said.

He ejected safely and was taken to Mike O'Callaghan Federal Hospital. Air Force policy prevents base officials from releasing the names of pilots involved in crashes without their permission.

Schumann said the pilot had logged more than 1,500 hours in the F-16 and had earned the "Senior Pilot" designation based on his years in the military.

The crash remained under investigation Friday by a military safety board, which is expected to determined the cause. The plane was assigned to the 16th Weapons Squadron at Nellis' Air Force Weapons School, according to the statement.

The safety board, which includes an active duty Colonel, flight surgeon and maintenance personnel, is expected to take roughly two months to make its determination, Schumann said.

On that same runway last year two planes crashed: an FA-22 stealth fighter in December and an F-15C in June. Another two remote-controlled Predator aircraft assigned to the base were forced to make hard landings on the runway that year, she said.

A software glitch was blamed for the December crash of an FA-22 stealth fighter at Nellis, a crash that kept the Raptor fleet nationwide grounded. That $133 million jet was one of the eight based at Nellis with the 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron.

An F-15C fighter jet flown by an instructor crashed outside the base in June after Maj. David Graff was forced to eject because of a dual engine flameout. At the time Graff was a weapons school instructor.

The Raptor crash came a month after a Navy F-18 Hornet crashed about 15 miles north of the base. That single-engine jet had been reported missing before the crash site was located in a sparsely populated area north of the base. Based out of the Oceana Naval Air Station, it was used for training at the weapons school, base spokespeople said.

In March 2004, an Air Force Beechcraft went down on the training range, killing four contractors and a civilian pilot.