F-16 Pilot Error Midair

[DelaneyT]

Report: Pilot error caused F-16s to collide

Tuesday Jan 12, 2010

Pilot error led to the fatal collision of two F-16 Fighting Falcons on an Oct. 15 {night} training mission off the coast of South Carolina, an Air Combat Command report released Monday concluded...


{Pilot fatality} was flying too fast and not paying attention to the position of the other F-16 when he flew into {the lead aircraft} as the two were returning to Shaw AFB, the accident investigation board report said.

The jet struck {lead aircraft} from behind at a closing speed of about 163 mph. The canopy.. first hit left rear horizontal stabilizer and then impacted the underside left wing. Pilot died when his jet struck the wing of lead F-16.

{Pilot fatality} was an inexperienced F-16 pilot with only 126 hours in F-16 cockpits and 12 hours flying with night-vision goggles. {Lead Pilot} was an F-16 instructor pilot with 967 F-16 hours...”
:sad:

Report: Pilot error caused F-16s to collide - Air Force News, news from Iraq - Air Force Times (http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2010/01/airforce_f16_accident_011110w/)


....seems to be a trend developing with these Night-Vision-Goggles mishaps (??)

[vecvechookattack]

Investigation board president Maj. Gen. Stanley Kresge, an F-15 pilot and commander of the Air Force Warfare Center, concluded that Giglio’s “improper power setting, airspeed, flight path … and lack of reaction to an impending crash clearly indicate Giglio was not focused on accomplishing a safe rejoin.”

But was he guilty of Gross negligence?

[bast0n]

Sounds like a bee in the cockpit to me, or his chewing gum jammed the throttles.................

Any airworthiness issues................?

[Skittles]

I am new to this site, and am unaware of the conventions regarding civilians posting in this particular forum, so I apologise if I shouldn't be posting here.

However, I wonder if anyone in particular could give me any subjective desciption of the effect of night vision goggles whilst flying. All of the NVG's I've ever tried on (not whilst flying obviously) have been poor quality so I am clearly in no position to make a judgement, but I imagine that with little experience they impair depth perception etc?

[Jolly Green]

Maybe I can help a bit. Although I have a few hundred hours with nvg's, I had my last nvg flight in 2002, so current pilots should be better able to help. First, while visual acuity is certainly worse than daylight it's better than nothing for terrain flight and much better than using lights for formation references. They can be a great asset, but take some getting used to.

The problem for a pilot lacking nvg experience, like the mishap pilot, is that the image is different than daylight and therefore not intuitive. It takes some conscious thought to make sense of the image until experienced on nvg's. We used to think it took about 20 hours on goggles to start getting good add it. Well, that's my opinion for what it's worth. Your mileage may vary.

[L J R]

When flying on NVGs, each commanding organisation has a documented set of specific 'Key Points' to make during a rejoin for a specific aircraft type. The Keys are distance, speed and closure targets to achieve. If the 'Key' is achieved, the next key may be pursued....:ok:

[BlindWingy]

Flying a FJ with NVG is fraught with the potential for visual illusion (small, fast aircraft able to change direction rapidly, very high closure rates)

It sounds like his radar was faulty which means he was probably trying to use a mix of visual/radar trail.

So couple the distraction of his avionics issues, probable high workload with a tiny, fuzzy, green dot in his NVG's which got almost imperceptively bigger....

Its caught out so many inexperienced pilots before, its just terribly sad that this newbie paid for it with his life.

BW

[SASless]

{Pilot fatality} was flying too fast and not paying attention to the position of the other F-16 when he flew into {the lead aircraft} as the two were returning to Shaw AFB, the accident investigation board report said.



Well let's guess what was going on in the cockpit and the pilot's mind as he was about the smack Lead from behind!

Did he make a mistake.....plainly....but to word it that way makes one wonder about the Investigation's focus (unless they have a cockpit tape of the dead man playing pocket chess or something)!:mad:

New to the machine....new to NVG's....over the ocean at night....formation flight....maneuvering flight.....low time pilot.....and it is all the dead man's fault....yeah right!

[advocatusDIABOLI]

I was, in a former life, and Exchange F16 IP, and although we didn't teach NVG flying on my Sqn, I've had that joy with many hours in other types.

NVG flying, to the novice, can seem straightforward and easy: Night becomes day! Albeit Green Day! The quality of the latest gogs is very good, but their quality, in my view, is also their potential hazard. I always found, that the image apeared very 'Flat', and that closure, aspect and subtle changes in motion are difficult to identify. All these things compound to make 'Visual' joins into close difficult. Most units have standard procedures for this, which require the pilot to essentially carry out a full radar approach, under VID criteria. However, this in itself is tricky, as it requires contant re-focusing of the eyes from gogs to 'Drool Tube' (MFD). In most cases, the drool tube is only visible by looking 'under' the gogs.
So, a relatively inexperienced pilot, in a single seat fighter became task saturated and developed an unwelcome amount of overtake (Very Easy to do in an F16!), he would not have noticed the subtle cues for this, and without proper reference to the radar, may have only seen the problem too late.

Tragic, yes. Pilot Error, Yes. 'Gross' negligence, in my view NO. No because the task probably outstriped the reasonable expected abilty of a pilot with so few hour on type.

By the grace of God we go, and many of us have been given the chance to do things and opperate on supervisory 'risk'. It's how we learn, it's how we get better. In most cases, the outcome isn't so tragic.

Fighter Flying has significant risk, always has, probably always will.

Keep Safe,

Advo

[blimey]

Would that be a straight and level join at say 300kts, or onto a manoevering lead going considerably slower than Giglio thought (150kts overtake!).

[vecvechookattack]

I have to agree with Advocatus here. I have considerable experience with NVG albeit on RW . However, the one element of this report which surprised me was that an aviator of so little experience was being asked to conduct NVG Formation / Close flying.

In the RW that is A Level stuff and only taught to experienced aviators. This chap wouldn't have had much experience in Formation during the day never mind at Night

[saudipc-9]

However, the one element of this report which surprised me was that an aviator of so little experience was being asked to conduct NVG Formation / Close flying.
Agreed, what might be the issue here is training. Was the pilot properly trained and briefed as to how he should conduct the manuever. Too often I see folks getting the blame when really the fault lies with the system and not with the individual.

[Ewan Whosearmy]

This chap wouldn't have had much experience in Formation during the day never mind at Night

He was a first tour IP (i.e. this F-16 assignment was his second tour), so I think he'd have done his fair share of day formation flying.