Odd F22 Story

[Coyote Chris]

Am I just a paranoid crazy old man or does the Air Force's side of the story have "WhiteWash" written all over it?


Air Force: Pilot's Failure Was Fatal

http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/avflash/2090-full.html#205920

The Air Force is blaming a veteran pilot for the crash of his F-22 fighter, saying he lost control of the airplane while preoccupied with fixing the oxygen system . Capt. Jeffey Haney had his mobility and vision restricted while flying an F-22 at 38,000 feet and 1,039 KTAS, at night, and then the jet cut off his oxygen supply. According to the accident report released last week, Captain Jeffrey Haney became distracted when his oxygen system stopped delivering oxygen. After initiating a descent, he allowed his F-22 to roll past inverted, unchecked. The fighter's attitude resulted in a vertical speed of -57,800 feet per minute. Haney failed to recognize that, according to the report, and also did not activate the emergency oxygen system. Haney attempted recovery from the resultant supersonic dive with a 7.4-G pull, three seconds before impact. Conditions in the cockpit revealed by the report may contribute some telling details.

According to the Air Force accident report (PDF), Haney "was recognized throughout his career for exceptional performance." On the accident flight, he was outfitted for cold weather (wore bulky clothing) and night operations (wore night vision goggles). That personal equipment would have "reduced mobility in the cockpit" and interfered with his "ability to look from side to side and down at the consoles" without bracing himself "on various areas in the cockpit." The applicable checklist for failure of the oxygen system includes activation of an emergency oxygen system. That system is actuated via a pull ring that requires 40 pounds of force to actuate and is mounted low and aft to the side of the pilot's ejection seat. The pilot's gear would have made reaching that ring difficult and failure of the oxygen system would have caused "severe restrictive breathing" at the same time. The accident report found that Haney had applied inadvertent control inputs that he failed to recognize. He remained conscious throughout the event and recognized the jet's condition prior to impact. The $147,672,000 F-22 Raptor hit the ground left-wing low, with a 48-degree nose down attitude. It was flying at 1.17 Mach at the time.


The F-22 Raptor's systems will cut off oxygen to the pilot under specific conditions. The accident aircraft was affected by one of those conditions, but the Air Force failed to determine what, specifically, caused that initial condition. The last Raptor rolled off the production line in mid-December 2011. Unit cost for the jet (a per-copy figure that includes development and production costs) has been estimated near $377 million.

[AirDOGGe]

Re: Odd F22 Story

While there was equipment failure, it doesn't appear to be the cause of the crash.

Instead it looks like pilot error combined with poor equipment design. I read about this earlier, including flight recorder data that show inadvertent pilot control input:

The US Air Force has ended the mystery of what happened to the Lockheed Martin F-22 that crashed on 16 November 2010.

According to the newly-released accident investigation board report, the cause wasn't the onboard oxygen generation system (OBOGS), although it did stop working.

Instead, the pilot apparently struggled to activate the back-up oxygen system so much he inadvertently flipped the F-22 over into a steep dive while contorting his body to pull the tiny ring tucked into the side of his ejection seat.

I can believe it, because this information reads so similar to the John Denver Long-EZ crash.

In both cases the pilot was reaching around aft to the side to get to a difficult-to-reach control (A fuel tank selector switch in Mr. Denver's case), when they lost control. I THINK in both cases it was stated that rudder input did it, but I know for sure that was the cause for the loss of dear John.

Try it. While sitting, take your right hand and reach around over your shoulder to your left, behind you, and you will automatically push off with your right foot for the greatest reach.


The reason why I agree with pilot error being the cause is because in both cases, the plane in question had been flown many times before with success by other pilots, including operation of said control. Inattention by both accident pilots to the inadvertent control input was the demon here.

[georgiacub]

Re: Odd F22 Story

His primary O2 syatem had failed; don't you think that maybe he just may have been a little hypoxic?

Have you ever been in an altitude chamber? Do you know how fast a person gets hypoxic without O2 above 35,000'?

I do not know what his cabin altitude was but if he was trying to activiate his emergency O2 supply perhaps it was a factor.

The placement of the emergency O2 activation switch may have had a bearing on what happened.

I find the pilot error cause factor less than realistic.

[Coyote Chris]

Re: Odd F22 Story

I have to say I am with Georgiacub.
In the Denver case, it is up to the pilot to know his fuel state in his tank and be able to do fuel management. Though I am curious about this particular case as I know the engineers that worked on the reconstruciton of the accident for the law suit so I think I will ask them.
I have no idea what it is like for a pilot to be flying in the death zone and suddenly he/she is without oxegon. Now you have to reach some out of the way pull cord and pull it at 40 lbs? That sounds like something out of the 1930s....Why arent the computers sensing the failure, alerting the pilot, turning on the backup unless overridden? Next thing you know, the airforce will be building a hi tech drone that the enemy can bring down intact.

[AirDOGGe]

Re: Odd F22 Story

Do you know how fast a person gets hypoxic without O2 above 35,000'?

Pretty damn fast, although only if the air pressure surrounding the pilot drops to equal that 35k+ altitude. The crash report doesn't mention anything like that, unless I missed something.



So the question will now be:


1..... Was the pilot affected sufficiently by reduced oxygen flow alone to reduce his ability to act, or...

2.... did he get a visible or audible system warning of the failure first and try to act on it before oxygen levels dropped to the point where it would have impeded him?....or...

3..... did the drop in oxygen accompany a similar drop in cockpit pressure, as happens in accidental cockpit decompression instances? Only that would have affect him quickly as you describe.


I have heard nothing of the latter. Just cutting off oxygen won't impede you right away, else just holding your breath after you exhale would cause near-instant black-outs.

It requires a significant drop in atmospheric cockpit or suit pressure to affect one quickly with hypoxia, hence the need for large decompression chambers to test pilot's limits, instead of just slipping oxygen masks on them and then cutting OXY flow while sitting in the classroom.


We need to know if the cockpit was still pressurized to a safe altitude at the time of loss of control or not. If pressure dropped quickly enough before then, then I'd have to agree that the pilot could have and probably was impaired. But if the cockpit was still at high-pressure/low altitude then he should have been able to breath cockpit air briefly, yes? No?


Going by what data we have right now, I have to stick with the case where the pilot, being only human, made a simple error that quickly snowballed into a tragedy.




SO, I guess that's all I can offer until we learn more data. I'm not interesting in pointing fingers at pilots...I'm just interested in the truth. And in truth, I hope I'm right, else more pilots will be in danger from this oxy supply failure problem.


...'Til later.



P.S...

..Next thing you know, the airforce will be building a hi tech drone that the enemy can bring down intact.

Heh-heh. I like to think that we sent it over there to snag deliberately, to distract the Iranians from the real covert infiltration mission occurring on the other end of the country (wink-wink). "Them-thar Seal Team Six boys sure am sneaky!"

[Coyote Chris]

Re: Odd F22 Story

I think personally, I need to have an AF pilot chime in about the section on oxegon mask management....

http://www.avweb.com/pdf/air-force-f22-report-121411.pdf

My brother fooled the Airforce for 35 years into thinking he was a human factors engineer....I e-mailed him and asked about that....
I dont think i am understanding the two positions, or how they could possbily tell after a crash of this intensity.

One thing is for sure....we have a pilot who was highly trained and highly thought of by the Airforce get into big trouble very quickly that night....
Sure, even our best pilots can make mistakes....look at Capt. Chris Striklin ejecting out of his Thunderbird at Mountain home...but somehow this seems very diffeent....

[AirDOGGe]

Re: Odd F22 Story

Randy still coming around? Of all the AAFO'ers, he'd be the man to ask.

[Coyote Chris]

Re: Odd F22 Story

Yeah, he would be the man...havent heard alot from him lately....

[FuryFan]

Re: Odd F22 Story

I read the official report by the Air Force (there was a link to it in the article.) Well.......I really scanned over it fairly quickly. From what I managed to digest the oxygen system malfunction (don't really think it was a total failure) was only the start of the incident. When the pilot got the warning from the aircraft systems he initiated a steep banking dive to get to a lower altitude. During the dive he was obviously involved in some serious multi-tasking. He inadvertantly made some additional attitude inputs (alierons, rudder?) while attempting to get to something else in the cockpit, which resulted in an even steeper dive. The additonal control inputs resulted in less than 1G of force on the pilot and therefore went unnoticed by him. By the time he noticed his altitude he was at 5 to 6 thousand feet and his rate of descent was 50,000+ feet per minute.........you get the picture. During this descent there were multiple or sequentially different alarms in the cockpit and it was at night. According to a graph included in the report, if the pilot would have initiated his pull up just a thousand feet sooner he may have made it, although he was pulling 7+ G's at impact.
If I passed along any inaccurate information, my apologies.

Kevin

[Coyote Chris]

Re: Odd F22 Story

IIRC, there was a time that no pilot inputs were recorded.....I wondered if he had passed out and only awoke late in the dive to try and pull out.
I still dont understand the jargon about the two positions of the Oxegon mask......I remember Skip lecturing at Oshkosh about depressurizing the cockpits of the F-105 right before rolling in on a target, and, presumably, going on the masks.....
I know beans about squat, but I would hate to see this pilot being unfairly criticized. Same thing about Striklen. Sure, he messed up, but I think the airforce deserves a dope slap for not having the planes' altimeters set so that field altitude is "0" instead of AMSL.

[Ken Dwelle]

Re: Odd F22 Story

As I read the report, it looks like a bleed air leak in the center duct caused the jet to irrevocably close all the bleed valves at 51,000' which resulted in the loss of cabin pressure, heat, cooling, oxygen and the ability to suck any air through the pilot's mask! The bit about the pilot's right side mask release aims to answer the question of whether the pilot dropped his mask (you do this on the right side) which would have allowed him to breathe. Except of course, there is no more pressurization and the cabin would be climbing at a rapid pace. Either way, the need of the moment is to rapidly descend NOW! I never flew the F-22 but the procedure would have dictated that the pilot find the green ring outboard of his left thigh and pull it forward with a force of 40#, thereby activating the emergency oxygen bottle which lives on the left side of the ejection seat. Don't forget it was night, he was wearing an anti exposure (poopy suit), night vision goggles and could not inhale!

If you read into the report it appears that the school solution was to drop his mask via the right side release, start down at a very high rate, pull the green ring, reattach the mask, then level off above the terrain. Obviously it didn't end that way so they blamed it on pilot error, they almost always do.

I spent most of the day Monday fretting over this and am left with the conclusion that a very good pilot was handed a really bad deal and didn't do what he had to do to keep from dying. He was setup by the exposure suit, the NVG's, the night and a jet which removed his ability to breathe at 51,000'. In my day the jets had a liquid oxygen tank which allowed you to breathe no matter what. The F-22 "manufactures" its own gasses as it goes, until the bleed valves close... He got the short end of the stick.

[deepsky]

Re: Odd F22 Story

The thing that amazes me, is that the data recording system is pretty damn hardcore to survive that crash!

[goldfinger]

Re: Odd F22 Story

From Ken's description, and what I've read, this sounds like design error. If you make it impossible to recover from a situation like this by simply adding an exposure suit and making it hard to see (night) then you haven't designed the aircraft to be robust in all conditions expected. I've heard not even a hint of pilot error at all, though we'll never know everything, I think they're throwing him under the bus, and a flawed bus at that. It doesn't take that much to make it difficult to do things in the cockpit, just a winter jacket alone restricts you quite a bit, let alone a poopy suit. The 02 system should be completely solid and redundant, and very simple no matter the weather or mobility. Apparently it isn't.

[First time Juke]

Re: Odd F22 Story

While there was equipment failure, it doesn't appear to be the cause of the crash.

Instead it looks like pilot error combined with poor equipment design. I read about this earlier, including flight recorder data that show inadvertent pilot control input:







I can believe it, because this information reads so similar to the John Denver Long-EZ crash.

In both cases the pilot was reaching around aft to the side to get to a difficult-to-reach control (A fuel tank selector switch in Mr. Denver's case), when they lost control. I THINK in both cases it was stated that rudder input did it, but I know for sure that was the cause for the loss of dear John.

Try it. While sitting, take your right hand and reach around over your shoulder to your left, behind you, and you will automatically push off with your right foot for the greatest reach.


The reason why I agree with pilot error being the cause is because in both cases, the plane in question had been flown many times before with success by other pilots, including operation of said control. Inattention by both accident pilots to the inadvertent control input was the demon here.

Somehow I get the feeling someone is not going to like it...."poor equipment design" in $ 377 000 000 aeroplane !

After having said that I just did do some cockpit designing and I have a bullet proof system for my tiny electric ac for the rudders. You can never mishandle them by accident. I had serious cramps in mind...that I wanted to avoid in long flights ( in a combustion engine variant )..since the cockpit is small that can happen easily...in fact all controls are custom designed.
Some of it is described in my blog..but no pics yet ( secret still ).

[RBriscoe]

Re: Odd F22 Story

It's called "Human Factors".

The engine bleed air was shut off for an unknown reason, initiating the mishap sequence. The mishap aircrew was wearing cold weather/survival gear which made it difficult to locate, much less activate, the emergency oxygen supply. (Design fault) It is probable that the mishap aircrew looked down to try to see where the emergency oxygen control was after not finding it by feel which could easily have resulted in both spatial disorientation and unintentional flight control inputs compounding the spatial disorientation. (The report does talk a little bit about the flight control inputs.) Add to that the the mishap aircrew may have been on the verge of a loss of consciousness. The aircrew is believed to have been wearing night vision goggles which, one would suspect, may have complicated matters.

Call it what one may, this is a circumstance that could easily happen again if the lesson is not learned.

Somehow I get the feeling someone is not going to like it...."poor equipment design" in $ 377 000 000 aeroplane !

After having said that I just did do some cockpit designing and I have a bullet proof system for my tiny electric ac for the rudders. You can never mishandle them by accident. I had serious cramps in mind...that I wanted to avoid in long flights ( in a combustion engine variant )..since the cockpit is small that can happen easily...in fact all controls are custom designed.
Some of it is described in my blog..but no pics yet ( secret still ).