F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before fighter jet crashed in Alaska

A US Air Force F-35 pilot spent 50 minutes on an airborne conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers making an attempt to remedy a drawback with his fighter jet before he ejected and the airplane plunged to the ground in Alaska earlier this yr, an accident report launched this week says.

The January 28 crash at Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks was recorded in a video that confirmed the plane dropping straight down and exploding in a fireball. The pilot ejected safely, struggling only minor accidents, but the $200 million fighter jet was destroyed.

An Air Force investigation blamed the crash on ice in the hydraulic traces in the nostril and main touchdown gears of the F-35, which prevented them from deploying correctly.

According to the report, after takeoff the pilot tried to retract the touchdown gear, but it will not do so fully. When decreasing it again, it will not heart, locking on an angle to the left. Attempts to repair the touchdown gear prompted the fighter jet to suppose it was on the ground, in the end main to the crash.

After going through system checklists in an attempt to remedy the issue, the pilot bought on a conference call with engineers from the airplane’s producer, Lockheed Martin, as the airplane flew close to the air base. Five engineers participated in the call, including a senior software program engineer, a flight security engineer and three specialists in touchdown gear systems, the report said.

The pilot then tried two “touch and go” landings, where the airplane briefly lands, to attempt to straighten out the jammed nostril gear, the report said.

But those makes an attempt failed to recenter the nostril wheel and resulted in both the left and proper main touchdown gears freezing up and not having the ability to lengthen totally to attempt an precise touchdown.

At that level, the F-35’s sensors indicated it was on the ground and the jet’s laptop systems transitioned to “automated ground-operation mode,” the report said.

This prompted the fighter jet to develop into “uncontrollable” because it was “operat(ing) as though it was on the ground when flying,” forcing the pilot to eject.

An inspection of the plane’s wreckage discovered that about one-third of the fluid in the hydraulic systems in both the nostril and proper main touchdown gears was water, when there ought to have been none.

The investigation discovered a related hydraulic icing drawback in another F-35 at the same base during a flight 9 days after the crash, but that plane was ready to land without incident.

The report notes Lockheed Martin had issued steerage on the issue the F-35’s sensors had in excessive cold climate in a upkeep e-newsletter in April 2024, about 9 months before the crash. The drawback may make it “difficult for the pilot to maintain control of the aircraft,” the steerage said.

The temperature at the time of the crash was -1 degree Fahrenheit, the report said.

It said if the conference call contributors had referenced the 2024 upkeep e-newsletter, “they likely would have advised a planned full stop landing or a controlled ejection instead of a second touch-and-go” that finally led to the situations that prompted the crash, the report said.

GWN has reached out to Lockheed Martin for remark on the Air Force report.

The Air Force’s Accident Investigation Board concluded that “crew decision-making including those on the in-flight conference call,” lack of “oversight for the hazardous material program,” which oversees storage and distribution of the hydraulic fluid, and not correctly following plane hydraulics servicing procedures, all contributed to the crash.

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