Report: Pilot’s distraction led to F-16 crash - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Report: Pilot’s distraction led to F-16 crash

An F-16 pilot’s failure to stay aware of his surroundings caused him to crash into another F-16 directly in front of him on the runway during a training exercise, according to an accident investigation released Tuesday.

The F-16 pilot, whose name hasn’t been released, was blamed for the July 29 accident at Kunsan Air Base, South Korea. Investigators found that the pilot failed to properly prioritize tasks and visually scan the area, which “led to a situation where [the pilot] lost awareness of his position to the aircraft in front of him.”

The pilot’s F-16 sustained about $2 million in damage, and the second Fighting Falcon received about $589,000 in damage. Neither pilot was injured, nor was private property damaged.

The two Fighting Falcons were part of a four-aircraft flight getting ready to launch the first of three training sorties in an operational readiness exercise when the accident occurred. The flight lead stopped on the taxiway as part of a standard radar check, with the second and third aircraft in the flight subsequently stopping behind the first.

But the fourth pilot in the flight — the mishap pilot, who had logged 1,234 hours of pilot-in-command time — was trying to accomplish additional aircraft system checks as he taxied and didn’t noticed the other aircraft had stopped, according to the report. When he looked up and saw what was happening, it was too late to stop a collision.

Air Force investigators blamed the accident on a lack of visual scanning, a misprioritization of tasks and selective attention. An “excessive motivation to succeed” could also be blamed, according to investigators.

The pilot wanted to make sure his tape titling — where the pilot records necessary mission information — and an earlier review of steer point coordinates were accurate. He reported that while he looked up after checking the first coordinate, he felt overconfident during the mission and did not look up while checking the last three coordinates before taxiing.

“The added stress of the ORE and the desire to excel, coupled with a sense of overconfidence as the result of previous days’ experience contributed to the [pilot’s] failure to properly manage his tasks,” according to the report. “These factors yielded a situation where [he] failed to recognize the dangerous situation developing in front of him until it was too late to prevent the aircraft from colliding.”

Other factors — proper rest time, weather and technological issues — were ruled out as causes for the accident, as were potential physical or mental limitations of the pilot.