Fighter jet crashes at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida; pilot ejected and taken to hospital
EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Florida — An F-22 fighter jet with the 43rd Fighter Squadron crashed Friday morning during a routine training mission.
The pilot, whose name has not been released, ejected from the aircraft and was taken to the base hospital, said Ilka Cole, a spokeswoman for the 96th Test Wing, which is the host unit at Eglin AFB. He is in stable condition and has been visiting with family and friends at the hospital.
There were no other injuries or damage to civilian property, a statement from Eglin AFB officials said.
The crash happened around 9:15 a.m. about 12 miles northeast of the main base in a remote part of the reservation. The sprawling Eglin reservation covers hundreds of thousands of acres across Northwest Florida.
It was not clear Friday afternoon whether the crash sparked any fire, a concern in an area where wildfires have consumed hundreds of acres in recent days, and which remain a threat in the area’s current hot, dry and windy weather pattern.
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The F-22 Raptor was on a routine training mission at the time of the crash, Cole said, and was not part of a flyover scheduled Friday morning to honor first responders and hospital personnel for their work on the front lines of the battle against COVID-19.
The crash prompted Eglin AFB officials to recall the four jets that were to be involved in flyover, said Don Arias, Tyndall Air Force Base spokesman. The jets were already in the air.
The aircraft that crashed, along with the aircraft in the flyover – a separate F-22, an F-35 fighter jet and two T-38 training jets – are among aircraft originally assigned to Tyndall AFB that were moved to Eglin AFB before and after Hurricane Michael in 2018, which laid waste to Tyndall AFB.
Arias said there will be two investigations into the crash: a safety investigation and an accident investigation. The safety investigation, involving pilots, will consider the actual conduct of the flight. The accident investigation will comprise what Arias called a “cross-disciplinary team” that will attempt to determine a cause for the crash.
Results of the safety investigation won’t be made public, but the accident investigation will be made available to the public. However, accident investigations can take months, and sometimes years, to complete.
Cole said shortly before 1 p.m. that the base likely would not be releasing additional statements on the crash Friday, nor did she anticipate the release of any statements during the weekend.
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The F-22 is the most sophisticated fighter plane flown in the military. It has radar-evading stealth capabilities and the ability to destroy multiple targets. Its production was halted during the war in Iraq when it was viewed as too expensive and ill-suited to the counter-insurgency wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The plane had been plagued by cost overruns and delays since its development in the final days of the Cold War. The Air Force envisioned a fleet of 648 F-22s. When the final F-22 was delivered to the Air Force in 2012, the program cost more than $67 billion and had produced 183 planes.
The Air Force lists 183 F-22s in its inventory and its cost at $143 million per plane.
Contributing: Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on Northwest Florida Daily News: Eglin Air Force Base fighter jet crashes in Florida; pilot ejected
