YUMA — The pilot of a U.S. Marine Corps Harrier jet that crashed into a Yuma neighborhood in 2005 may have been able to safely land the plane but was ordered to eject by his flight leader, a report concludes.
The pilot also wasn't trained how to react to the failure that caused the plane to begin to lose control, and the report recommended adding a similar scenario to flight simulators used to train aviators.
The AV-8B Harrier was carrying four 500-pound bombs when it crashed amid four homes in a neighborhood adjacent to the Yuma Marine Corps Air Station on June 15, 2005, but none exploded and no one on the ground was hurt. The pilot suffered only minor injuries.
The report issued by the Naval Joint Law Center in San Diego and obtained by the Yuma Sun newspaper found no fault with the pilot.
But it said that the flight leader didn't have a clear view of the troubled Harrier when he ordered the pilot to eject and called his decision "premature and a significant contributing factor to the mishap."
People are also reading…
The report did not list a definitive cause for the crash.
The Harrier, an attack jet that can take off and land like a helicopter by redirecting its thrust downward, began rolling to the right as the pilot prepared to land because one of the reaction-control systems failed, the report said. A cause of the failure hasn't been determined because of crash damage, but it likely was a mechanical problem with a coupling in a duct that can be adjusted to direct thrust.
The report concluded that the pilot could have used rudder inputs to help control the airplane's bank, but he wasn't trained in the technique.
Couplings on all four of the jet's elbow control ducts were apparently installed incorrectly and improperly tightened, the report found. Repair manuals used by mechanics at Yuma did not have updates that addressed the installation problems.
Base spokeswoman Capt. Beatriz Yarrish said pilots are now briefed on how to react to a duct failure, and computer programmers are working to set up the flight simulators so pilots can practice reacting to such issues.
Yarrish also said updates to the repair manuals have been submitted and are going through an engineering approval process.
"In the interim, in order to ensure aircraft maintainers receive the updated information, procedures are in place that provide them with that additional information," Yarrish said.
