Ooops, $100 million fighter jet lost, pilot ok

I read that a couple of people on the ground said they saw the plane go inverted. This is really puzzling to me. There are only 2 ways that should happen. One is by manual operation and the other would be caused by different mechanical controls being engaged incorrectly at the same time. Can this happen by mechanical defective instruments? Yes, but it’s very unlikely.

I would like to know if the NTSB is aiding in the investigation. Using them gives the investigation some credibility. The government has been known to place blame where it doesn’t belong. The NTSB, to my knowledge, has never misled the public.
 

@fuzzybuddy I hadn't heard that tape before, so I had to look it up & listen to it.

I've been on both sides of 9-1-1 calls, both calling-in & receiving. As a call evaluator/dispatcher, each call is different with sometimes unique circumstances. You have no idea what you'll get each time you answer the phone. With that being said, this one is at the top of that list & hopefully a once-in-a-lifetime call. I know this sounds like arm-chair quarter backing & I don't mean it to sound that way, but thankfully this call (while being serious) wasn't one of those all hell-breaking loose & an immediate all hands on deck where help should have been there 15 minutes ago the call was received scenario.

I'm sure she was caught off guard at first, but IMHO she should have taken control of the call from the beginning & asked questions to clarify & find out exactly what happened. Sometimes the caller-in can be nervous, vague or in shock themselves, so it's up to you to draw out the information you need to do your job.

This lady appeared to be out of her depth on how to handle this call. If she was in training, where was her Training Officer who should have taken over when she was floundering. It did sound like she was going off of a script, especially when she replied "I have to ask these questions" & some of that information had already been freely provided. It sounded to me that either didn't hear what the complainant was telling her from the beginning, ignored what she was being told, was trying to figure out what to do or a combination of all.

If she was going off a boiler-plate question sheet, that Center IMO could be headed towards trouble down the road. One-size fits all questions doesn't work in this business. At the end of the call, it sounded like she was reading a "business disclaimer" to the pilot about what to & not to do. I hadn't ever heard something like that before.

Many times in other incidents I've heard of or read where call evaluator/dispatchers were criticized for how they handled a particular call. In some cases they could have done better & in others they did nothing wrong with what they had to work with.

I'm glad no one was seriously injured in this incident either from the pilot ejecting or when the plane finally went down.

This is the link to the audio I listened to: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/22/f35-911-call-pilot-ejected/
 
Something about the pilot was trying to avoid lighting or something. I thought they said he put it on auto pilot prior to ejecting
 
WhatInThe said:
Something about the pilot was trying to avoid lighting or something. I thought they said he put it on auto pilot prior to ejecting
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If that’s true, I don’t understand why he didn’t set the autopilot to send the plane out over the water. I understand that the plane went into a flat spin and that may have made it difficult for the pilot to know his correct heading before he set the heading to go out over the ocean. It’s going to be interesting to find out the cause.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
And the US is the only nation that admits to missing nukes. We don't really know if other nations are missing a few. Apparently when you have tens of thousands of nukes, it's like that lost box of Xmas ornaments.
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It's going to get worse the more that are in the nuclear club. It's not so much the ballistic missiles that can be launched thousands of miles of way it's the smaller tactical or backpack nukes that are probably a greater danger.

I'm surprised the jet crash/explosion didn't show up on somekind of satellite imagery or sensor. True the US mainland isn't a battlefield to be monitored but one would figure a weather satellite could've picked it up.
 

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