Birdstrike
Atlantic City
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2002
- Posts
- 13,334
For the F-18 community - would appreciate comments ref the RDU Hornet ejection prior to rotation. No doubt a rough, split-second call - the fact that it just missed rolling into a passenger terminal and that no one was seriously injured is amazing.
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Raleigh News & Observer
March 28, 2004
Cause Of Crash At RDU Unclear
Military landings routine at airport
By Craig Jarvis, Staff Writer
MORRISVILLE -- Many questions remained unanswered Saturday about why a Navy pilot ejected from his F/A-18 Hornet on takeoff Friday at Raleigh-Durham International Airport so close to a terminal and departing commercial planes.
But one of the most-asked questions -- what was a fighter jet doing there in the first place? -- has a simple answer.
The military flies both high-performance aircraft and cargo planes in and out of civilian airfields in just about every state.
There have rarely been any problems with the arrangement, judging from the fact that most people don't even notice that they're there.
"In general, you're talking the best-trained pilots in the world, far better trained than most civilian pilots," aviation expert Joe Berkert of Norwood, Mass., said Saturday.
Many neighbors of the Metropolitan Nashville Airport in Tennessee didn't realize the military was allowed to land there until 1996, when an F-14A Tomcat pilot lost control of his plane during an unauthorized acrobatic takeoff and crashed into houses, killing the two crewmen and three people on the ground.
Durwood Hall, a Nashville city councilman at the time, testified in a congressional hearing on the crash that most people in the community didn't know fighter jets on cross-country training flights regularly refueled there.
"I was certainly surprised," Hall said Saturday in a phone interview. "I told them someone needs to evaluate the need for using municipal facilities in heavily populated areas."
But Berkert said military jets come and go all over the country without incident, even though many times they carry missiles. The jet that crashed at RDU on Friday was not armed.
At RDU, the military logged 2,779 takeoffs and landings last year -- about eight every day. That's only about 1 percent of the airport's operations.
Much of that traffic is from the N.C. Air National Guard. Hornets are not regular visitors, airport spokeswoman Teresa Damiano said Saturday.
She said Friday's accident hadn't given airport officials reason to reconsider allowing the military to land there.
"We have a complete working relationship with the Navy, and everything is fine," she said.
Lt. j.g. Wesley Baumgartner and a fellow pilot had left the Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach on Friday morning in separate jets to fly training exercises in the region. They landed at RDU to refuel and planned to continue to Tennessee. Navy spokeswoman Cmdr. Lydia Robertson said she didn't know the precise destination.
The other jet took off, but when Baumgartner's Hornet picked up speed about 2,000 feet down the 7,500-foot runway, something prompted him to bail out. He suffered scrapes and bruises but remained at WakeMed on Saturday for observation, Robertson said.
He had been with Strike Fighter Squadron 15 about four months; it was his first assignment after spending about a year training in Hornets, Robertson said. The other pilot returned to RDU soon after and was expected to fly back to Oceana late Saturday.
Close call
For now, the Navy is not disclosing details about what might have gone wrong with the jet, nor is it speculating on whether the pilot acted properly by ejecting rather than trying to maintain control.
An investigative team is interviewing the pilot, witnesses and other people, inspecting the mechanics of the aircraft and checking out the pilot's physical condition, Robertson said. A final report on the accident could be several months away, she said.
"The focus right now is to get this investigation going," Robertson said. "We're going to do everything we can to make sure something like this doesn't happen again."
After the pilot bailed, the abandoned Hornet continued 4,000 feet down the runway, began swerving back and forth and crossed a grassy area onto a taxiway. It came to rest upright and in flames about 250 feet from Terminal A, which was full of travelers.
"Wow, that could have been a real disaster," Berkert said.
Some passengers on airliners waiting to depart were too close for comfort as they saw what happened. Hank Boll of the Netherlands said in an e-mail message that he was aboard a Newark-bound Continental Airlines plane scheduled to leave just as the accident happened, at 3:10 p.m.
He said the jet ended up 200 feet from them. "I'm very lucky to survive this accident!" he wrote.
His flight was delayed about 90 minutes. Schedules were backed up throughout the night but had returned to normal by Saturday morning, Damiano said.
Berkert, a former military and commercial pilot who moderates a forum on a leading Internet aviation resource -- www.landings.com -- said it was unusual for a pilot to eject on takeoff. He didn't want to speculate about what happened.
"He got some notice in the cockpit something was about to blow and obviously thought he couldn't stop on the runway," Berkert said.
Commercial pilots can raise their landing gear to stop in an emergency, he said. "It's not pleasant, but it works," he said.
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Raleigh News & Observer
March 28, 2004
Cause Of Crash At RDU Unclear
Military landings routine at airport
By Craig Jarvis, Staff Writer
MORRISVILLE -- Many questions remained unanswered Saturday about why a Navy pilot ejected from his F/A-18 Hornet on takeoff Friday at Raleigh-Durham International Airport so close to a terminal and departing commercial planes.
But one of the most-asked questions -- what was a fighter jet doing there in the first place? -- has a simple answer.
The military flies both high-performance aircraft and cargo planes in and out of civilian airfields in just about every state.
There have rarely been any problems with the arrangement, judging from the fact that most people don't even notice that they're there.
"In general, you're talking the best-trained pilots in the world, far better trained than most civilian pilots," aviation expert Joe Berkert of Norwood, Mass., said Saturday.
Many neighbors of the Metropolitan Nashville Airport in Tennessee didn't realize the military was allowed to land there until 1996, when an F-14A Tomcat pilot lost control of his plane during an unauthorized acrobatic takeoff and crashed into houses, killing the two crewmen and three people on the ground.
Durwood Hall, a Nashville city councilman at the time, testified in a congressional hearing on the crash that most people in the community didn't know fighter jets on cross-country training flights regularly refueled there.
"I was certainly surprised," Hall said Saturday in a phone interview. "I told them someone needs to evaluate the need for using municipal facilities in heavily populated areas."
But Berkert said military jets come and go all over the country without incident, even though many times they carry missiles. The jet that crashed at RDU on Friday was not armed.
At RDU, the military logged 2,779 takeoffs and landings last year -- about eight every day. That's only about 1 percent of the airport's operations.
Much of that traffic is from the N.C. Air National Guard. Hornets are not regular visitors, airport spokeswoman Teresa Damiano said Saturday.
She said Friday's accident hadn't given airport officials reason to reconsider allowing the military to land there.
"We have a complete working relationship with the Navy, and everything is fine," she said.
Lt. j.g. Wesley Baumgartner and a fellow pilot had left the Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach on Friday morning in separate jets to fly training exercises in the region. They landed at RDU to refuel and planned to continue to Tennessee. Navy spokeswoman Cmdr. Lydia Robertson said she didn't know the precise destination.
The other jet took off, but when Baumgartner's Hornet picked up speed about 2,000 feet down the 7,500-foot runway, something prompted him to bail out. He suffered scrapes and bruises but remained at WakeMed on Saturday for observation, Robertson said.
He had been with Strike Fighter Squadron 15 about four months; it was his first assignment after spending about a year training in Hornets, Robertson said. The other pilot returned to RDU soon after and was expected to fly back to Oceana late Saturday.
Close call
For now, the Navy is not disclosing details about what might have gone wrong with the jet, nor is it speculating on whether the pilot acted properly by ejecting rather than trying to maintain control.
An investigative team is interviewing the pilot, witnesses and other people, inspecting the mechanics of the aircraft and checking out the pilot's physical condition, Robertson said. A final report on the accident could be several months away, she said.
"The focus right now is to get this investigation going," Robertson said. "We're going to do everything we can to make sure something like this doesn't happen again."
After the pilot bailed, the abandoned Hornet continued 4,000 feet down the runway, began swerving back and forth and crossed a grassy area onto a taxiway. It came to rest upright and in flames about 250 feet from Terminal A, which was full of travelers.
"Wow, that could have been a real disaster," Berkert said.
Some passengers on airliners waiting to depart were too close for comfort as they saw what happened. Hank Boll of the Netherlands said in an e-mail message that he was aboard a Newark-bound Continental Airlines plane scheduled to leave just as the accident happened, at 3:10 p.m.
He said the jet ended up 200 feet from them. "I'm very lucky to survive this accident!" he wrote.
His flight was delayed about 90 minutes. Schedules were backed up throughout the night but had returned to normal by Saturday morning, Damiano said.
Berkert, a former military and commercial pilot who moderates a forum on a leading Internet aviation resource -- www.landings.com -- said it was unusual for a pilot to eject on takeoff. He didn't want to speculate about what happened.
"He got some notice in the cockpit something was about to blow and obviously thought he couldn't stop on the runway," Berkert said.
Commercial pilots can raise their landing gear to stop in an emergency, he said. "It's not pleasant, but it works," he said.
