An Air Nationwide Guard F-16 Preventing Falcon fighter jet skidded off the runway on the Sioux Falls Regional Airport on Tuesday afternoon, simply weeks after an analogous incident occurred to a different plane on the identical airfield.
Round 4 p.m. native time, an F-16C with the South Dakota Air Nationwide Guard’s 114th Fighter Wing “departed the sting” of a runway after getting back from a routine coaching mission, the unit mentioned in a press release. The incident is underneath investigation.
Images from the native newspaper, the Sioux Falls Argus Chief, present the jet with its nostril cone dipped into the bottom. Emergency crews got here to the scene to test on the pilot, and he was launched.
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Tuesday’s incident mirrors one other touchdown mishap with the 114th Fighter Wing that occurred simply 20 days earlier.
On Could 11, one other F-16 “went off the tip of Runway 15 at Joe Foss Area” on the regional airport. Photographs started circulating on-line of the fighter jet’s nostril cone dipping to the bottom after it landed throughout an analogous coaching mission. The pilot and floor have been secure.
“Regardless that we prepare to do that every single day, there’s nonetheless danger concerned. We’re grateful that nobody was harmed on this incident,” Col. Mark Morrell, the 114th Fighter Wing commander, mentioned in a press release following the Could 11 incident.
Tuesday’s runway mishap is the most recent in a string of touchdown mishaps and crashes seen this 12 months with the Air Drive‘s jets.
Notably, there have been long-standing points particularly with F-16 touchdown gear. Collapses on F-16Cs have been taking place since not less than the late Nineties, in line with Air Drive Journal.
On March 5, 2019, the Air Drive issued an order for the “Substitute of Major Touchdown Gear Downlock Actuators and Assist Brackets and {Hardware} on all USAF F-16C/D Blocks 40/42/50/52 Plane,” the journal reported.
F-16 items had till March 2, 2022, to adjust to the order. It is unclear whether or not the 114th Fighter Wing has changed its gear. The Air Nationwide Guard unit didn’t reply to a number of telephone calls left with its public affairs workplace on Wednesday.
The Air Drive has been flying the earliest variations of the F-16 for the reason that late Nineteen Seventies and the F-16C/D variant — which is flown by South Dakota’s 114th Fighter Wing — for the reason that mid-Nineteen Eighties.
There have been three F-16 mishaps final 12 months, in line with the Air Drive Security Heart. One of many crashes led to the demise of a pilot and the airplane being utterly destroyed.
The identical week as one other F-16 crash in Louisiana in March of this 12 months, airmen started posting a picture of an F-22 Raptor with its nostril buried within the floor at Eglin Air Drive Base, Florida, after the plane had an obvious touchdown gear mishap.
An virtually equivalent incident occurred with one other F-22 at Eglin final 12 months, when a pilot skilled an in-flight emergency and the entrance touchdown gear did not function correctly, inflicting the nostril to dip and influence the runway.
Air Drive Security Heart information reveals that 5 Raptors had mishaps in 2021, costing taxpayers upward of $600,000 every.
Investigations into the 2 touchdown mishaps final month at Sioux Falls are ongoing.
“The Wing has shaped an interim security board to start investigating the incident,” the 114th Fighter Wing mentioned in a press release. “Observe-up data shall be offered because it turns into out there.”
— Thomas Novelly may be reached at thomas.novelly@navy.com. Observe him on Twitter @TomNovelly.
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