An accident investigation board convened by Air Mobility Command to review last fall’s crash of an Air Force Flight Standards Agency C-21 at Decatur Airport in Illinois. The board found that the pilot, who was in aircraft commander upgrade training and was flying a simulated single engine approach, could not recover when the aircraft became unstable when he reduced power for landing. Air Force instruction says to use both engines in such a situation, but the pilot failed to do so. Neither he nor the instructor pilot was able to prevent the aircraft’s right wingtip tank from striking the runway and slide of the aircraft across a field. The board concluded that the pilot “was unable to take corrective action,” and the IP “failed to take the appropriate action to correct the situation.”
The computer code that runs the MQ-9 Reaper drone will be overhauled in the next two years to test revolutionary new tools that would make its software “much, much harder to hack,” the Air Force says.