Air Force maintainer blamed for causing fire in fighter jet with forklift, incident report says

An Air Force maintainer was criticized by officials for losing control of a bomb lift truck that struck a parked F-16 Fighting Falcon jet, causing it to burst into flames last year during a deployment, an accident investigation report revealed.

The incident – ​​which occurred at an “undisclosed location in Southwest Asia” – occurred on November 17, when the maintainer was operating an MJ-1 vehicle, called a “jammer,” while crew members loaded ammunition into an F- parked. 15E Strike Eagle, detailed the report released on Friday.

While operating the pump lift and placing it in reverse, the maintainer experienced a “loss of situational awareness and confusion” during which he thought he could not stop the vehicle and was accelerating instead of braking. The aviator knew of a different model that had a small difference in the location of the pedals, according to an Air Force investigation.

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The MJ-1 hit the F-15E’s gunner pod, and the maintainer “hit his head and scratched his back” and then became “unconscious,” the report detailed. The airman was thrown from the vehicle and struck the Strike Eagle’s landing gear tire, where he changed direction toward the F-16 Fighting Falcon parked about 60 feet away.

The lift ended up hitting the aircraft’s fuel tank, causing a leak.

“A spark from the…MJ-1 ignited a fire, which engulfed the…MJ-1 and the right front portion of the (F-16),” the report states.

Although the incident did not result in deaths or serious injuries, it caused nearly $5,000 in environmental cleanup costs and more than $30 million in damage to the aircraft, according to the accident investigation board.

A crew member attempted to use two other bomb lifts before the incident, but one would not start and the other was experiencing gear shifting problems, which led the crew to use the blocker that caused the incident, the report concluded.

The report also points to other flaws such as “a lack of adequate documentation for the jammer fleet at the undisclosed location and a lax culture of adherence to Air Force technical standards and procedures by maintainers at the site” as additional factors in the accident. Air Forces Europe-Air Forces Africa said in a press release.

The report on the incident comes as the Air Force pressures maintainers to sign non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, before they can receive privileged safety reports on such accidents.

In a roundtable with reporters on Friday, Maj. Gen. Sean Choquette, Air Force chief of security and commander of the Air Force Security Center, said recent incidents on the flight line prompted authorities to have maintainers signed NDAs and briefed them on security. reports.

The Air Force’s 80,000 maintainers will have access to the reports after signing the NDAs, he said.

“We’ve had an increase over the last year in what we call aviation ground operations accidents, so we don’t fly the aircraft, but we do tow planes around the flight line, maintenance work on the flight line,” Choquette told reporters. . “We can’t share all the learned information we have within the privileged security system without extending it to them.”

After major accidents, Air Force officials typically commission two reports: an accident investigation board report and a safety investigation board report.

The former is released to the public, while safety investigation board reports are kept internally, often provide more details and specifics behind the cause of an accident, and are used to educate military personnel and employees. Choquette said homeland security privilege is important in investigations.

“What security privilege does is promise these individuals that anything they say cannot be used in disciplinary action and will not be presented in public for them to speak at length about what occurred,” Choquette said. “We don’t want to put them in a situation where they feel like they can’t tell the whole story, because it will come out in an article that will be read by their family, their superiors or their subordinates.”

For example, Military.com reported the accident investigation board’s findings behind the CV-22 Osprey crash late last year in Japan that claimed the lives of eight airmen. But the news organization also reviewed a copy of the Homeland Security Investigation Board’s report which, unlike the accident investigation board’s report, revealed advance warnings related to a component that failed on the aircraft a decade ago.

Transparency advocates told Military.com earlier this month that requiring NDAs appeared to be an “effort to intimidate” those in uniform from speaking out.

When asked by reporters whether an airman could face administrative action if he revealed privileged security information under this NDA, Choquette responded, “You bet he would.”

Related: To view crash information, Air Force maintainers must now sign non-disclosure agreements

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