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Pilot sues Boeing over F-15 falling apart

The pilot of the F-15C Eagle that broke apart in November, forcing an Air Force-wide grounding of F-15s, has sued the jet’s builder.

Maj. Stephen Stilwell’s lawsuit accuses Boeing Co. of endangering the lives of F-15 pilots and claims the company should have known the fighter wasn’t built to specifications.

The lawsuit seeks more than $75,000 from Boeing. The 27-year-old jet was built by McDonnell Douglas, which became part of Boeing in 1997.

The “misconduct of Boeing constituted gross indifference” and a “conscious disregard for the safety of F-15 pilots,” the lawsuit filed March 21 in St. Louis, Mo., federal district court claims.

The lawsuit says that Stilwell, a Missouri Air National Guard and commercial airline pilot, has not been cleared to return to flying military or civilian jets because of the injuries he suffered as the plane broke into pieces and he ejected. Calls to Boeing were not immediately returned.

After the Nov. 2 breakup, an Air Force investigation which included assistance from Boeing, determined that the fighter broke apart behind the cockpit because one of the support beams — called a longeron —that reinforces the fuselage snapped apart. The aluminum-alloy longeron failed because it was thinner than what specifications called for and its rough finish left the longeron susceptible to cracking.

The breakup occurred as Stilwell flew a 7.8G-turn, a standard training maneuver.

An inspection of all Air Force F-15s turned up 149 that also had thin or rough finished longerons and nine jets with cracked longerons.

Since the inspections, the Air Force has cleared most of its 420-plus F-15s to return to flight. However, Eagles with questionable longerons must be inspected more often.