WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
- Two compressor blades failed inside an inaccessible section of the Thunderbird’s Pratt & Whitney F100 engine, causing catastrophic damage and thrust loss.
- The pilot fought for four minutes before ejecting safely at 400 feet, while the $33 million F-16 crashed seconds later.
- Investigators cleared the pilot, maintainers, Thunderbird leadership, and flight approval officials of responsibility.
- A similar fifth stage blade failure caused another F-16 crash at Holloman Air Force Base in April 2024.
An Air Force Thunderbird pilot was performing a routine maneuver during a training flight last December when the F-16CM suddenly lost thrust.
The maneuver required the pilot to push the fighter’s engine to full thrust, a setting pilots call “Military Power.”
Instead of feeling the expected force pushing them into the seat, the pilot sensed the aircraft abruptly stop responding. The pilot later told Air Force officials it felt “like the jet just…stopped midair.”
Deep inside the F-16’s Pratt & Whitney F100 engine, two fan blades had broken loose.
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Investigators determined the failures caused catastrophic engine damage and a significant loss of thrust, while a camera mounted on the aircraft recorded an explosion of fire from the engine.
The pilot was not merely a Thunderbird team member.
They were one of two pilots on the elite demonstration squadron experienced and trusted enough to serve as a solo performer during the team’s airshows.
For the next four minutes, the pilot fought to keep the crippled fighter airborne.
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The pilot climbed while the aircraft still had speed, flew through a valley to avoid higher terrain, and worked through emergency checklists.
The pilot managed to restart the engine, but the damaged powerplant produced no thrust.
With the F-16 only 400 feet above the ground, the pilot announced “ejecting.” over the team’s radio.
Four seconds later, the aircraft slammed into the ground in a fireball recorded by a second Thunderbird flying close behind.
The pilot descended safely beneath a parachute and waved to a Thunderbird wingman that flew overhead.
Image Credit: DoW
The $33 million F-16 was completely destroyed.
A final Aircraft Investigation Board report released Monday cleared the pilot, aircraft mechanics, Thunderbird leadership, and officials who approved the training flight of blame.
Col. J.C. Brooks, the board’s president, wrote that Thunderbird personnel completed all required inspections, documentation, and servicing before the mission. He also found the pilot was current, qualified, medically fit, and took appropriate action during the emergency.
Investigators instead traced the crash to three misaligned or turned variable vanes in the fourth and fifth stages of the engine’s compressor section. A fifth stage compressor blade and a sixth stage compressor blade failed because of high cycle fatigue and separated during flight.
Those failures produced the catastrophic damage and thrust loss that made sustained flight impossible.
The problem existed in a section buried so deeply inside the engine that maintainers do not inspect it during routine maintenance, even when using advanced equipment during major inspections.
The Pratt & Whitney F100 generates thrust by heating and accelerating air through 13 fan stages before forcing extremely heated exhaust from the rear. Each stage contains hundreds of steel fan blades and vanes operating under extreme forces and temperatures.
Maintenance crews can inspect and repair the first four stages at the front of the engine.
They can also examine the seventh through 13th stages from the rear or with specialized scope cameras inserted through access ports along the engine.
Image Credit: DoW
Those ports provide limited borescope views of the second, third, fourth, seventh, eighth, 12th, and 13th stages, along with the combustion chamber. No access ports allow comprehensive inspection of the fifth and sixth stages of the engine core module.
Investigators found those two hidden stages can be checked only during major overhauls, when the entire engine is removed from the aircraft.
That maintenance limitation left crews with no opportunity to discover the blade defects that ultimately brought down the Thunderbird.
The crash was the second similar F-16 loss in less than two years involving fan blade failures in a Pratt & Whitney F100 engine.
An F-16 at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, crashed in April 2024 after a fan blade in the same internal area broke free and caused catastrophic damage.
The pilot in the Holloman accident also had no option but to eject. The report examining that crash described the inaccessible engine section as a “blind spot.”
Investigators examining both wrecked fighters found fifth stage fan blade failures. The Thunderbird also suffered a sixth stage blade failure, but both investigations concluded that mechanics had followed the proper maintenance procedures.
Neither investigation determined when the damage inside the hidden engine sections first developed.
The findings left maintainers cleared of wrongdoing while exposing an internal area that available inspection procedures could not comprehensively reach.
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