Word: crashing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Lancer. In fact, it's not a jet at all but the first plane fledgling pilots fly--the powerful, propeller-driven trainer flown by cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. Six people--three cadets and their instructor pilots--have died in three crashes of the T-3 Firefly trainer since the planes began flying there in 1995. The T-3's crash record is all the more startling because from 1964 to 1994, cadets flew the trainer's predecessor, the T-41, without a single fatality. But in 1995, the Air Force Academy said goodbye...
...least one lesson was still to be learned. When an Air Force officer briefed Shirley Dostal on the crash, she asked why her son hadn't had a parachute. The officer explained that parachutes would be of little use in the T-3 because the plane lacked ejection seats. Five months after Mark died, another T-3 went into a spin, and the crew couldn't recover. It was a lot like Dostal's crash, except for one thing. It was a British T-3 flying over the English Midlands, and both pilots were wearing parachutes. They bailed...
...spooked some instructors shortly after cadets started flying it in January 1995. At a meeting a week before the first crash, several grumbled that the T-3 lacked parachutes. "It's crazy that we don't fly with parachutes," said one of the instructors present, Captain Dan Fischer. "It's an FAA regulation if you do acrobatics." Air Force superiors said the service didn't have to obey Federal Aviation Administration rules even though the T-3, unlike most Air Force planes, is registered with the FAA. Back at his apartment, Fischer was blunter. "Someone's going to die before...
...Force investigation concluded that Dostal put the plane into a spin and that Fischer fumbled the recovery because the Air Force had not adequately trained him. The crash report said the engine was running while the plane plunged a mile in 30 sec., in 17 ever tightening spirals, into a snow-covered pasture. Yet witnesses told investigators the plane was silent as it came down. The Air Force grounded the T-3s for a week. And when they resumed flying, spins were banned...
...Sept. 30, 1996, a second T-3 crashed 30 miles east of the academy, killing Cadet Dennis Rando, 21, and his instructor, Captain Clay Smith, 28. The Air Force concluded that Rando, a senior, and Smith had been practicing a forced landing and crashed when the engine failed during a key part of the maneuver. The first expert to study the wrecked engine said it was operating at impact. But when they looked into it, Air Force investigators disputed that finding, especially when they discovered that the initial expert didn't work for the Air Force, as they had thought...