How not to cook a bird

March 30, 2007

F-16 engine ingests bird after takeoff @ Tyndall AFB. Think you might find it interesting to see a crash from the cockpit of an airplane. It is an instructor pilot in the rear and a student in the front seat of an F-16.

A “Bird Strike,” as seen through the Heads Up Display (HUD). You can see the bird flash by just prior to impacting the engine. You can hear the aircraft voice warning system telling them they have a problem and referring to the “D-6 NL” which means there is no engine RPM. They made 2 attempts to re-light the jet engine, but evidently there was too much damage from the bird strike and they had to eject.

These guys were very cool; note the heavy breathing. They certainly flew longer than one would expect before ejecting. Airspeed can be observed on the HUD’s upper left corner. It goes down to the low 120’s as they struggle to get the engine going again, but as the plane noses over and dives to earth it increases to at least 175 just before impact.

It just goes to show how quickly your day can go to pieces - 45 seconds from strike to ejection. All and all, not bad. They ran the Emergency Checklist, made two re-light attempts, and picked out a plowed field for impact before ejecting.

You can follow the audio attached to it and hear the conversation between the pilot and instructor pilot and then the tower. Including the pilot saying they were punching out. The tower didn’t seem to completely understand it all, and missed the significance of the last transmission.

The towers last radio call, he’s talking to an empty aircraft. The video continues until impact, even after they both eject. A classic “buying the farm” as you can see the plowed rows get bigger. A real nice job from the aircrew by keeping their cool and turning the aircraft away from populated areas. No one hurt and no one killed but the dirty bird did cost the Taxpayers a “few” million dollars!

March 30, 2007 | Filed Under Randomness

Comments

7 Responses to “How not to cook a bird”

carol meanlinglis giannone on April 1st, 2007 6:50 am

There has been more than one “dirty bird” in our lives, like the one that decided to cook itself by making a home in our chimney. Not a pretty sight when the chimney sweep cleaned out the problem. Then there are the “dirty birds” that keep me from making the perfect golf shot because of the the goose poop my balls lands on or near. And…I fondly remember my boating days when on a clear day a sea gull let loose on the top of my head. Sigh…
Lis on April 3rd, 2007 9:44 am

Ewe I forgot that story about the bird pooping on your head. That’s gross. CML has had some weird things happen to her.
Lis on April 3rd, 2007 10:03 am

lol.. just ran past this bird story.

Man serves 5 months for killing ostrich that pummeled him
He shot it after women watched bird beat him up.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/30/BAG4NOUOVA1.DTL
sissy on April 3rd, 2007 9:33 pm

I forgot about the pooping on the head moment.
carol meanlinglis giannone on April 12th, 2007 6:47 am

I know a few others that could use Animal Cruelty Counseling. Some in my own family!
THO on August 26th, 2007 7:56 am

I was surfing the internet looking around for a specific F-16 mishap where the pilot managed to bring the jet back with an engine failure. In the process i stumpled over this video. AND, I’m sory to say, but this is NOT an F-16 and it is not a Tyndall. It is acutally a Hawk Mk. 115 and it is a Moose Jaw. And how do I know, well, I know because I flew the Hawk Mk. 115 out of 15 Wing Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada during my pilot training, and because I fly the F-16 in the Royal Danish Air Force.

I actually flew a couple of trips with the IP and I also know that because of the mishap he no longer flies jets, but now flies the Hercules. He got seriously injured during the ejection. I believe he broke his leg several times. The student got released from hospital the same day. It happened a couple of months after I finished the last part of my training a 4 Wing Cold Lake, Alberta.

The “D6NL” you hear on the tape is actually T6NL and is refering to “Engine overstress or Temperature to High”. You also hear a “Gear Not Down” which is refering to the landing gear not being down after take off with excessive sink rate below a certain number of feet I can’t remember any more.

Regarding the handling of this emergency I do agree the pilots were cool. The handling has one major flaw though: The IP is talking about bringing the throttle “around the horn” which is refering to the relight proceedure of the CT-114 Tutor jet, which he instructed on before the Canadian Forces started flying the Hawk for advanced pilot training. One other thing: In the Hawk you can only restart from the front seat, and the student thought the IP was restarting which he obviously was not.

There is a number of other things that went wrong and stuff that the Canadian Air Force learned from this mishap. The training program is called NFTC “Nato Flying Training in Canada” and has a lot of different countries attending. The UK, Denmark, Italy, Hungary, Canada, Singapore amongst others plus IP’s from the same countries and Sweden, Germany, the US and France. One of the biggest problems is the language barrier. In this mishap it was a british student with a Canadian IP, still, with using the wrong terminoligy and difference in language there was a misunderstading in the cockpit. Anyone wo flies knows that this CAN cause problems. In this incident there was no way thay could have saved the jet. Good job on the pilots to survive and not to hit anything. As a side note, they actually landed not far from a cementary only a kilometer or so from the base.

If you would like to know more I suggest you check out this link which is the offcial Canadian crash investigation report:
http://www.airforce.forces.gc.ca/DFS/pdf/REPORTS/FSIR/CT155202/CT155202_e.pdf

Sorry for the long comment, but I get carried away from time to time

Best regards, and check six
THO - Pilot in the Royal Danish Air Force
Lis on August 28th, 2007 7:05 am

Thanks for the feedback THO. Interesting read