Deadly Fighter Crash 'Clearly Avoidable'

WASHINGTON, March 3, 2009— -- The crash of a Marine fighter jet in San Diego that killed four people was "clearly avoidable" if the pilot and officers on the ground assisting him during the emergency had followed proper procedures, a Marine general said today.

As a result of a Marine Corps investigation into the F/A-18 Hornet crash in December, 13 Marines have been disciplined, including four who were relieved of their duties.

The investigation concluded that the fighter was brought down by a rare double-engine failure, but it also found that the second engine failure could have been prevented, according to a report released today.

If checklists had been followed, the plane would have continued on course to the nearest available airstrip at Naval Air Station North Island, Calif., instead of being redirected to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, which was further away and also took the disabled plane over heavily populated neighborhoods, the report said.

Audio recordings also released today by the Federal Aviation Administration show air traffic controllers twice offered the F/A-18 pilot a chance to land his plane at North Island. That airstrip was not only closer, it also offered a flight approach over open water, but the pilot continued toward Miramar.

Besides the four Marine officers who were relieved of duty for the series of bad decisions that led the malfunctioning plane to crash short of the runway at Miramar, nine other Marines have received administrative reprimands.

The plane's pilot, who safely ejected just moments before the plane crashed, has been grounded ever since and will receive a further review to determine if he should keep his wings.

In releasing the report at a news conference in Miramar, the 3rd Marine Air Wing's Brig. Gen. Randolph Alles apologized to the families of people killed in the crash.

"The tragedy was clearly avoidable," he said.

Col. John Rupp, who presented the report, said the crash resulted from "a complex emergency that was compounded by a series of well-intentioned and incorrect decisions" by the pilot and the other officers that "ultimately led to the fuel starvation of the aircraft's sole remaining engine."

The missteps were compounded by a decision by maintenance staff to continue flying the plane for five months even though it had a faulty fuel transfer system. But at the time of the crash, technical manuals did not explicitly require the grounding of aircraft that had this problem.

Since the investigation, those problems must now be fixed before an aircraft can fly again.

The tragic series of events began shortly after the F/A-18 fighter took off from the deck of the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln for a routine training flight. At the time, the carrier was located 90 miles southwest of San Diego, off the coast of Mexico.

Five minutes into the flight, a warning light indicated low oil pressure in the right engine. The pilot received instructions not to return to the carrier, but to head north and land his plane at North Island in San Diego. A short time later, he shut down his right engine.

Marine investigators concluded that diverting to North Island was the right call, because returning to the carrier could have posed a greater risk, even though the twin-engine plane was now flying with only one engine.

The errors began when the pilot failed to take out his pocket checklist, even though asked to do so by an instructor pilot aboard the carrier who was going to help him go through an emergency checklist.

The instructor did not read all of the cautions on the checklist either, so when a second warning went off indicating low fuel, the pilot did not realize the checklist called for him to make a landing at the nearest available possibility.

It was the first indication that the plane was also having trouble moving fuel from its tanks to the left engine.

Although the pilot radioed back to the carrier that a second warning light had gone on, his garbled message was never heard.

A short time later, the pilot made contact with his squadron's ready room at Miramar. It was these operations officers who are faulted by the report "for making well-intentioned, but incorrect decisions" and who instructed the pilot to instead head toward Miramar, which they believed offered the pilot a longer runway and a familiar landing field.

The ready room duty officer who first made contact with the pilot did not mention the second warning light to senior squadron officers who took over communications with the pilot. They based their decision to land at Miramar only on how much fuel the pilot had left and misidentifying his actual location.

Rupp called this "bad decision-making" and said, "No one understood the severity of the low fuel caution."

Rupp said that if the officers in the ready room had consulted their checklists, they would have seen it required a plane with a low fuel warning to land immediately at the nearest available airstrip, which in this case was North Island. Rupp also faulted the pilot for not being "emphatic" in mentioning his low fuel warning to the officers in the ready room.

The FAA recordings show the pilot was also given opportunities to head toward North Island, if needed. Asked if he wanted a visual approach to North Island or if he had something else in mind, the pilot replied, "I'm actually going to try to take it to Miramar if possible."

Later, the controller is heard telling the pilot that he will keep him on a heading to Miramar that will still take him toward North Island if he wants to land there. The pilot again indicated he wanted to head to Miramar.

The investigation determined the best and safest option was to bring the aircraft down at North Island.

As the jet approached Miramar, two more warnings indicated the left engine was not getting enough fuel. Ultimately, the engine shut down, leaving the plane without power just three miles from the runway at Miramar.

The pilot tried to aim the plane away from houses below toward a nearby canyon and ejected "at the last possible moment" with the plane continuing its freefall, the report said.

Despite the pilot's effort, the plane crashed 250 feet from the canyon, and plowed into three houses, killing four members of one family who were in one of the homes -- Young Mi Yoon, 36; her daughters Grace, 15 months, and Rachel, 2 months; and her mother, Suk Im Kim, who was visiting from South Korea.

After the crash, the sole remaining family member, Dong Yun Yoon, said he had no hard feelings toward the pilot.

The Marine officers relieved of duties include the squadron commander, operations officer, standardization office and maintenance officer, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., one of a group of lawmakers who received a closed-door briefing today on the investigation, said in a statement.