High-Flying Troubles - United States Air Force safety record (F-16)

www.adf-serials.com...


a quick list i found re your question

AUSTRALIA 1S: 49 IIIO(F) + 51 IIIO(A)
2S: 16 IIID
All produced locally, survivors sold to Pakistan in 1990

The last RAAF Mirage flight was on 8 February 1989 when A3-101 was flown from ARDU at Edinburgh to Woomera to join 47 of the type in storage pending their disposal. In 1990 Pakistan purchased fifty RAAF Mirages, including two which had been stored at Point Cook, and these have now been delivered to the Pakistan Air Force, where some will undoubtedly fly for many years to come.
The Mirage saw longer service in our front line than any other fighter. Despite the original estimated design fatigue life of only 1500 hours, some Australian Mirages flew over 4000 hours. Over forty aircraft were lost in flying accidents, but those who flew it held the type in high regard. Although the 'Miracle' has left our skies, many examples remain on display at museums around Australia.
Nearly half the fleet lost due to accidents.
I used to love watching the Mirage III in action...........oh fond memories.

ejections by country

[edit on 5-2-2008 by Jezza]

Originally posted by thebozeian
Has anyone done a percentage loss of the F-15E ONLY in comparison with the F-16? My thinking is that if there is little diffence in the comparison loss rate with the F-16
LEE.

Hey Lee

I my research on the subject there is very little in the way of F-15E losses including export countries. If you so wish to come up with a number on your own here is the site for losses. www.ejection-history.org.uk...
And here is the production run and total built for use in the USAF and export countries

F-15E - 236 built / 14 lost - USAF Strike Eagles
F-15S - 72 built / 3 lost - Saudi Arabia
F-15I - 25 - Israel
F-15K - 40 built / 1 lost - South Korea
F-15SG - 12 - Singapore
-------------------
385 TOTAL STRIKE EAGLE PRODUCTION

Hey guys, I’m pretty new to this forum so I’ll try to contribute what I can. I’m not to sure about the statistics that are being used in this thread. From my experience, the aeronautical industry uses mishap rates (number of mishaps/flight hours) when looking at the safety record of an aircraft. Now of course they look at many other things, this just happens to be one of the easiest pieces of data to collect and analyze. In which case fulcrumflyer’s data is probably the most meaningful data.

A mishap rate does not actually tell you how well designed the aircraft is. Instead it tells you the likely hood of a mishap occurring given the design, production quality, training, and policy associated with that aircraft. Even if we had the total number of hours all the F-16s have flown and we compared that to the number of losses, it still wouldn’t tell us if the F-16 is a good design or not. This is because you can take a poorly designed aircraft and make it work with the right training and policy. You can also take a superbly designed and manufactured aircraft and run it into the ground with poor training and poor policy.

Overall, the F-16 has one of the lowest Class A mishap rates which can be seen in fulcrumflyer’s data and from what I have heard, it has a much lower maintenance man hours to flight hours ratio then the F-15. So with that in mind, I would say that the F-16 is an extremely reliable and safe machine. It’s had its problems, but so have most aircraft. I don’t think you will find too much value when looking at number of losses vs. aircraft produced. Not to belittle anyone’s efforts and work. I know a lot of you have put in quite a few hours into finding these numbers. I just don’t want you guys putting in all this effort just to realize that what your looking for can’t be found in those figures.

Cheers

reply to post by The Mighty Maple


All valid points maple. I think the reason for looking at losses and getting actual numbers for the airframes lost is that the stat or back end of the work that was done to get it isn't available. Also this can give you a loss rate per year etc of an aircraft. Also with the info that we have we can look at a break down of the types of accidents and get further insight into what the "numbers" are saying.

The fun/problem with aviation history of any sorts and the impact that a specific aircraft can have on it is two part they story behind its operation and pilots etc and the numbers of how it good its sortie ratio was or the number of aircraft lost.

So while FF figures are more then valid they are the end facts missing the story behind the plane. At this point that story of the F-16 has been pretty well flushed out but more can always be found and since this is a conspiracy/science forum we don't always trust the numbers given to us

Oh and before I forget Welcome to ATS and the Forums!
Be sure to introduce yourself on the members page here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

If you ever need any help with anything here just send me a U2U (message of sorts) by clicking the button under any of my posts! See you on the forums.

[edit on 5-2-2008 by Canada_EH]

BUMP

Hey Iskandar, where is that data post you promised us? I'm not baiting here, I'm genuinely interested to see what you have to post.

reply to post by Willard856


Agreed! This was a great thread once we got to the info and facts. Did a ton of research on it too so it would suck to see it end too quickly. Anyways have we tried to recap where we are at with this info etc?

reply to post by Canada_EH



BUMP

great topic and dicussion!!!!!!!!!
lets keep it going

reply to post by Willard856

Hey Iskandar, where is that data post you promised us? I'm not baiting here, I'm genuinely interested to see what you have to post.

I’d love to, but when I started digging into my garage and going through the papers, my focus shifted towards the immediate need to locate the paper shredder, if you know what I mean.
It’s amazing how much “stuff” is just left lying around, and I can only imagine what some estate/garage sale bargain hunters must dig up all the time.
In fact, I would not be surprised if there are companies out there that specifically hunt for this stuff, especially in the government furniture “recycling” business.

Anyway, A Weber grill is not only good for burgers and stakes, it also comes in handy when the shredder brakes

In any case, publicly available data is more then sufficient to show a clear pattern.

Here’s an example;

Air Force F-16 Crashes in Arizona
8 hours ago
PHOENIX (AP) — The military says an F-16 flying out of Arizona's Luke Air Force Base has crashed northwest of Phoenix.
Base spokeswoman Mary Jo May says the plane went down around noon Friday.
She says the status of the pilot is unknown. The pilot was the only person on board.
Luke, in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, is the world's largest F-16 training base.

ap.google.com...

I'd suggest it is a little presumptious to say this crash continues a pattern, when a pattern still hasn't been established beyond what is expected of a single engine aircraft, and the cause of the recent crash isn't known!

There is actually a very severe cracking problem going on in the F-16 fleet. It's not causing crashes and is being found during PDMs or routine inspections. It's happening between the 4500 and 5000 flight hour mark. For the Block 25/30/32 it stands at about 3% of the fleet having cracks around bulkheads. For the Block 40/42 it's nearly at a staggering 18% of the fleet having cracks around the wing root fairing support.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Didnt Japan have issues like that with thier F-2 variant?

reply to post by FredT


Yes they did. It delayed delivery of their aircraft several times. It wasn't JUST cracks, but they found wing cracks during flight testing.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Was it just confined to the composite wing? That would be worth looking into IMHO. The composite wing was stronger, had higher loading If I recall (As well as some delamination issues in development) too.

If the wing could carry more and was stronger would it stand to reason that more stress would be carried by the airframe of the F-2 if they kept its design the same as the standard F-16? So you would expect crack to appear earlier in the F-2 body?

That's definitely something worth looking into. I'll try to dig into that and see what I can come up with. I'm currently working on three other threads as well, so it's a bit busy, but I'll see what I can come up with.

I'd suggest it is a little presumptious to say this crash continues a pattern, when a pattern still hasn't been established beyond what is expected of a single engine aircraft, and the cause of the recent crash isn't known!

I’m saddened to inform that the pilot from Luke base did not survive the crash.

He was from the 62nd.

For the last ten years this is the 17th crash out of 185 F-16s based at Luke afb. The last one was on December 6th of 2006.

That’s a statistical 1.7 crashes per year, or the loss of about 10% of the total force, which in it self is a pattern.

Luke AFB is also one of the biggest training bases for F-16s, if not THE biggest training base. They train Dutch pilots there as well as US pilots. Training bases tend to have higher crash rates.

reply to post by thebozeian


The statistics are correct. I maintained and instructed on the F-16 Block 10 thru 42. In the early years it was a wire chaffing problem. The lack of support in many areas where the 11 miles of wire went through the bulkheads had no protection and thus g-forces caused the wires to chaff. All of the F-16's have a 4 way redundant system to minimise potential hazards. The biggest problem with this aircraft is the location of the intake. The aircraft it self is a fantastic piece of machinery, I would take it over many of the other acft I was qualfied to work on. The F-15 the intakes are up higher off the ground as are many other acfts. So one must place an asterisk by this planes info because the intake is only 30 inches from the ground. I have seen thousands of vortex's formed from the engine sucking in the air and the vortex reaching to the ground and inhaling anything withing a 4 foot radius of the intake. As far as the other mishaps are concerned, I was involved in several investigations and many different factors come into play, weather, disorientation, maintenence, birds, training or lack thereof, and this happens to most of the weapon systems in the Air Force or the Army or Navy, Marines.

reply to post by FredT


It looks like it was just in the wing. They wound up using a new bonding process, along with sweeping the trailing edge slightly. They wound up with more wing area than the F-16. There was also a severe flutter problem, especially when carrying 2 ASMs on the wingtips.