Notify PAF Aircraft Crashes

[Raider 21]

Son,

Don't write stupid----. I have already met the first pakistani pilot who broke / fractured his neck after ejection due to ejection forces and survived---and that was in 1984-85 in Ogden Utah when he was based at Hill AFB.

The seat is zero zero---means that at even zero elevation zero sped it has safe ejection---. Being a female pilot---she may have a much higher tendency to break the neck if she has not done heavy workout to build up neck muscles.

Until and unless the autopsy report is not released and proves otherwise---I highly suspect that the pilot officer Marium died of a broken neck---.

A malfunction of the ejection seat is also possible---but when too many deaths start to happen---there are some very very serious issues inthe mechanical / technical dept of Paf.

Just out of curiosity was he flying F-16s at Hill AFB ??

 

[MastanKhan]

Just out of curiosity was he flying F-16s at Hill AFB ??

Hi,

He could not fly after the accident that happened flying out of Shorkot air base---the aircraft was an F6 if I remember it correctly.

He was there for either procurement or was incharge of the paf pilots coming in.

 

[SQ8]

yea I have seen first video.. seems like the jet lost energy and stalled .. true that pilot ejected.. hence I used the term almost 100% death record

I mean it is quiet a dismal record when we can count in few fingers where pilot survived compared to hundreds of deaths

Has to do with needless bravado displayed by PAF pilots on trying to "bring the aircraft in". They try to save the equipment and end up getting fixated and not consider ejection. There are limits to where the pilot takes a decision.

It is also important that needless speculation be avoided, there is already enough of it said with such authority that it passes off as truth.

18 confirmed losses of mirages since 2006. Two seats employed - MB PRM4-1 and MB-6. Former on older Mirages,newer on ROSE systems.
Mk.4 limited to
MINIMUM HEIGHT/SPEED ZERO/90 KIAS but depends on aircraft attitude and G as well.
Mk6. Zero/Zero but still dependant on aircraft attitude and pilot orientation.

10 deaths - 1 where the chute did not deploy, 1 due to incorrect safety pin in seat, 2 together in two seat variant
1 confirmed CFIT, 2 failed attempts to bring aircraft back safe.

out of this 4 confirmed ejections with Mk.6 seat. Pilot survived. This is the first known case that the Mk.6 seat was apparently not used.


18 confirmed losses of F-7P/PG variants since 2006. Seat is Martin Bkr
ZERO/ZERO IN NEAR LEVEL ATTITUDE

3 death due to impact.

15 Ejections - out of which three fatalities have occurred. That means that the seat still saved 13 lives.


F-16
10 Losses - 4 CFIT
6 Ejections - All pilots safe.


Point being, lets look at metrics before we decide on judging an aircraft or seat.

AIRCRAFT(number operated) DECADE CRASHES FLEET AGE AVG(YRS)

Mirage(94 III&V) 71-81 10 5-10
Mirage(84 III & V) 82-92 18 10-13
Mirage (~180) 93-2003 20 20-36
Mirage (~175) 2003-2016 21 30-46

 

[fatman17]

Pakistan Air Force MirageOctober 18th, 2016 This Mirage crashed due to a technical malfunction after take-off from PAF Base Masroor for a routine mission. wing commander fayyaz was killed.

 

[MastanKhan]

Hi,

This flyer was a Wing Commander---you can replace 10 aircraft and still cannot compensate for the loss of a single wing commander ranked officer---.

If it has to do with needless bravado---then there is a problem with the upper management enforcing its orders---and the pilots following the directive.

Which would also mean---that there is a serious problem of discipline amongst the fighter pilots.

A change of game plan is needed---a death in this manner would be designated as " suicide thru aircraft " and not designated as a " Martyr ".

You people will be surprised at the survival rate of the operators.

One too many higher ranking officers are dying in these crashes.

 

[SQ8]

Hi,

This flyer was a Wing Commander---you can replace 10 aircraft and still cannot compensate for the loss of a single wing commander ranked officer---.

If it has to do with needless bravado---then there is a problem with the upper management enforcing its orders---and the pilots following the directive.

Which would also mean---that there is a serious problem of discipline amongst the fighter pilots.

A change of game plan is needed---a death in this manner would be designated as " suicide thru aircraft " and not designated as a " Martyr ".

You people will be surprised at the survival rate of the operators.

One too many higher ranking officers are dying in these crashes.

The rank is irrelevant. What must be done are cost based metrics into the monetary and intangible costs that go into creating a officer. Yes, it is important to save the people in the congested apartment bloc... but the chances of the effectiveness of those lower middle class people in a conflict versus a CCS graduate are paramount.
The issue is not just martyrdom, but the after effects of a crash and the paperwork. The general hounding that the PAF does to a pilot who loses an aircraft and the internal witch hunts that follow.

Many a pilot has lot a plane to still rise to the top thanks to a honest investigating team and lead, and many a pilot has ended up with a mediocre career due to a team on a witch hunt.
Similarly, mediocre pilots exhibiting grave errors have been "saved" by higher ups...

Our airframe loss record isnt actually bad once we look at the age of aircraft and accumulated flight hours.

take a look at this

http://www.ejection-history.org.uk/Aircraft_by_Type/PAKISTAN/Mirage_III_V.htm

Then lets compare to this

And look at the causes given. It gives you a picture of flight safety for type and
http://www.ejection-history.org.uk/Aircraft_by_Type/PAKISTAN/Shenyang_F-6.htm

http://www.ejection-history.org.uk/Aircraft_by_Type/INDIA/mig_21_india.htm ( to be fair, the last few years were plagued by spares issues)
http://www.ejection-history.org.uk/Aircraft_by_Type/INDIA/Jaguar_India.htm

Both make, type, location and quantity along with quality of pilots assigned has a big impact on flight safety
@MastanKhan Which is why our F-16 pilots prefer to get out rather then save a lost cause when the probability gets too low( again, US equipment has safety systems FOR safety systems).
They know their value and the idea of living to fight another day.


As for this incident, it is too soon to comment as such on the pilots true motivation. The area does seem populated and perhaps a sense of responsibility to avoid letting the aircraft go into a populated area took over.

 

[WhyCry]

RIP for the pilot. He saved lives, my salute and condolences are with family.

This is the second in a month i think; earlier one happened in janjur or some like that.

 

[syed zia Hassan]

Wing commander fayyaz done his job he tried to saved civilian life and loss his life.. This is pride of Pakistan Air force ..always problem with air crafts..1968 to 2016 Mirage will be ground/ retired soon. But Pakistan air force Fighter Pilots are face this conditions from the start of their fighter Squadron unit. I pray to Wing Commander Fayyaz and his family they will face a new kind of challenge. God Help them.

 

[araz]

Son,

Don't write stupid----. I have already met the first pakistani pilot who broke / fractured his neck after ejection due to ejection forces and survived---and that was in 1984-85 in Ogden Utah when he was based at Hill AFB.

The seat is zero zero---means that at even zero elevation zero sped it has safe ejection---. Being a female pilot---she may have a much higher tendency to break the neck if she has not done heavy workout to build up neck muscles.

Until and unless the autopsy report is not released and proves otherwise---I highly suspect that the pilot officer Marium died of a broken neck---.

A malfunction of the ejection seat is also possible---but when too many deaths start to happen---there are some very very serious issues inthe mechanical / technical dept of Paf.

The question has been answered by Bilal khan777. According to him, there is a minimum weight for the seat to be effective and safe. The unfortunate female pilot was probably below the weight making it possible for her to have sustained damage during the ejection process. You can search the relevant post in this section regarding the death of the female pilot and read his response.
As to the recent deaths it is probably more to do with multiple factors including aging fleet, pilots wish to minimise ground level destruction, and sometimes sheer speed of occurance of events. I would certainly say that in the Civilian asector certainly evacuation of hte injured especially with regards to protection of the neck leaves a lot to be desired. We could with the right training of our paramedics save a few paralytics a year if not more.
A

 

[VCheng]

The unfortunate female pilot was probably below the weight making it possible for her to have sustained damage during the ejection process.

So who cleared an underweight pilot for flight in violation of such a basic requirement?

 

[Taygibay]

About the seats, MK.10 appeared in the seventies and
the first advertized as zero-zero even though the Mk.9
was deemed capable of it in the sixties. To give a time
frame : the first live test was on a Martin-Baker sending
employee Doddy Hay up & down on April Fools in 1961.
Anything prior was not demonstrably a real zero-zero.

Back then, ejection seats were mostly manually activated.
With the years, the electronics getting smaller and more
powerful, ejection sequence went more and more automatic
until on modern jets a pilot can literally wake up away from
his plane with a slap of fresh air.
As all can see from Oscar's post, most PAF ejection seats
save on the F-16s are prior to that Mk.10 I used as yardstick..

The Mk.10 is a nice piece of kit found on many & most jets
from Chendus to Kfirs, and even the Rafale demonstrator!
It just got left behind as even Wiki summarized easily :

The first successful emergency use of a Mk.10 seat involved a Red Arrows BAE Hawk on 17 May 1980
after the aircraft struck the mast of a yacht moored offshore at Brighton.[2]A fatal accident involving the Red Arrows
in November 2011 resulted in the temporary grounding of Royal Air Force aircraft fitted with Mk.10 seats.[3]​

Checking those highlighted dates, a layman could guess just
about correctly that 30 years is the upper life limit of this product
past which technological advances make it obsolete even if
the seat itself still works fine.

The present series has differences that make it ... well, a different beast
having been developed along the Euro-Fighter program and entering
service in 1995. Here is a summary :

Mk.16
The Mk.16 ejection seat design optimises pilot field of view, improves comfort and pilot efficiency, provides integration with OBOGS, chemical defence and helmet mounted systems and incorporates a second generation electronic sequencer with increased reliability and maintainability. With the Mk.16, Martin-Baker is extending the limits of escape system technology while simultaneously improving aircrew efficiency, reliability and ease of maintenance coupled with lower life cycle costs.

Mk.16A
The Mk16A grew out of the early work undertaken by Martin-Baker on the EF Demonstrator in 1984. This aircraft was fitted with the Mk.10LX seat and through various iterations, the Mk16A was developed between 1990-95 culminating in the delivery of seven seats for the Development Aircraft (DA) programme. The development of the Mk16A ejection seat was carried out at Martin-Baker’s facilities at Denham and Chalgrove and Langford Lodge in Northern Ireland. Because of the capabilities and wide operating envelope of the aircraft, Martin-Baker was presented with a series of challenges which have had to be overcome during the development of the seat such as the accommodation of a wider range of pilot models covering height, weight and sex requirements as well as achieving compatibility with equipment such as the Head Mounted Display (HMD), Chemical and Biological protection units (CB) and general aircrew equipment. Furthermore, the Mk16A seat utilizes a second generation digital seat sequencer which incorporates a strategy of continuous sensing of external environmental parameters. Under certain speed and altitude conditions the recovery timings at which the parachute is deployed are varied in order to optimise the terrain clearance.

Mk.16E
The System Development & Demonstration (SDD) ejection seat that was selected by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company is a further development of the Mk.16 range that has already been successful with the Raytheon T-6 Texan II (JPATS), the Eurofighter Typhoon, the NASA T-38N and US Air Force T-38 upgrade programs. More importantly, the US16E will be common to all F-35 Lightning II aircraft variants.

Mk.16F
New generation lightweight fighter aircraft, such as Eurofighter and Dassault Rafale, demand significant weight reduction for all their subsystems in order to achieve a lower aircraft total mass. The Mk.16 ejection seat achieves its remarkably light weight by combining the twin catapult outer cylinder tubes as both propulsion system and as the seat's primary structure. The Mk.16 ejection seat design optimizes pilot field of view, improves comfort and pilot efficiency, provides integration with OBOGS, chemical defence and helmet mounted systems. Reliability and maintainability have been key elements in the design, resulting in an escape system that has full component accessibility in the cockpit. Modular construction enables the seat to be safely removed or installed in minutes without removing the aircraft cockpit canopy. These and other design features will ensure that this new generation of ejection seat succeeds the Martin-Baker Mk.10 as the world's most popular escape system.​

http://wiki.scramble.nl/index.php/Martin-Baker#History

​

So to be clear, replacing the seats is not easy and more of a MLU thing.
The idea is that after 30 years, both the seat and the aircraft it pops out
of should be replaced much sooner than any later.

Have a great day all, Tay.

 

[aliyusuf]

F-16
10 Losses - 4 CFIT
6 Ejections - All pilots safe.

Thank you sir for sharing such comprehensive information. We get to learn something from such posts. Also, if you don't mind my indulgence on the number of F-16 losses, I was aware of only 9 such losses i.e. ...

No.....Date.......S/N.......Unit.......Variant/Block
01--18-Dec-1986--85609--PAF__38___TW--F-16B Block 15U
02--29-Apr-1987--85720--PAF__14__sqn--F-16A Block 15S
03--04-Sep-1989--84712--PAF__38___TW--F-16A Block 15Q
04--16-Jun-1991--85723--PAF___9__sqn--F-16A Block 15T
05--28-Oct-1991--85725--PAF__14__sqn--F-16A Block 15U
06--10-Nov-1993--84607--PAF__38___TW--F-16B Block 15N
07--17-Mar-1994--85721--PAF__14__sqn--F-16A Block 15S
08--22-Oct-1994--82701--PAF__11__sqn--F-16A Block 15E
09--17-Jul-2009--92729--____________--F-16A Block 15AQ OCU

Can you kindly share the particulars of the 10th F-16 loss.
I would really appreciate it.

 

[Raider 21]

Thank you sir for sharing such comprehensive information. We get to learn something from such posts. Also, if you don't mind my indulgence on the number of F-16 losses, I was aware of only 9 such losses i.e. ...

No.....Date.......S/N.......Unit.......Variant/Block
01--18-Dec-1986--85609--PAF__38___TW--F-16B Block 15U
02--29-Apr-1987--85720--PAF__14__sqn--F-16A Block 15S
03--04-Sep-1989--84712--PAF__38___TW--F-16A Block 15Q
04--16-Jun-1991--85723--PAF___9__sqn--F-16A Block 15T
05--28-Oct-1991--85725--PAF__14__sqn--F-16A Block 15U
06--10-Nov-1993--84607--PAF__38___TW--F-16B Block 15N
07--17-Mar-1994--85721--PAF__14__sqn--F-16A Block 15S
08--22-Oct-1994--82701--PAF__11__sqn--F-16A Block 15E
09--17-Jul-2009--92729--____________--F-16A Block 15AQ OCU

Can you kindly share the particulars of the 10th F-16 loss.
I would really appreciate it.

Wreckage remains of 85720.

 

[MastanKhan]

The question has been answered by Bilal khan777. According to him, there is a minimum weight for the seat to be effective and safe. The unfortunate female pilot was probably below the weight making it possible for her to have sustained damage during the ejection process. You can search the relevant post in this section regarding the death of the female pilot and read his response.
As to the recent deaths it is probably more to do with multiple factors including aging fleet, pilots wish to minimise ground level destruction, and sometimes sheer speed of occurance of events. I would certainly say that in the Civilian asector certainly evacuation of hte injured especially with regards to protection of the neck leaves a lot to be desired. We could with the right training of our paramedics save a few paralytics a year if not more.
A

Hi,

Just looking at the picture of the girl---she seems to be in the 140 lbs weight range---.

Supposedly---if she was below the weight range---then it is a HOMICIDE---. Someone needs to be charged with negligence---even though I don't think weight was an issue.

As for the deaths in crashes---one too many senior pilots are dying.

The picture of the current crash shows empty fields far out---.

So---at this stage---excuses are not good enough---there has to be technical reasons for that.

Wing commander fayyaz done his job he tried to saved civilian life and loss his life.. This is pride of Pakistan Air force ..always problem with air crafts..1968 to 2016 Mirage will be ground/ retired soon. But Pakistan air force Fighter Pilots are face this conditions from the start of their fighter Squadron unit. I pray to Wing Commander Fayyaz and his family they will face a new kind of challenge. God Help them.

Hi,

The picture of the crash shows open fields far out---!

 

[Jammer]

Has to do with needless bravado displayed by PAF pilots on trying to "bring the aircraft in". They try to save the equipment and end up getting fixated and not consider ejection. There are limits to where the pilot takes a decision.

Oscar, can't I agree with your needless bravado statement, I still believe that the PAF is a highly disciplined and well trained force and this discipline and training only gets honed further as one progresses up the ranks and gains more experience (including flying experience). Quality and well trained fighter pilots all over the world are trained along with those in communication with him/her on the ground as to when an ejection is inevitable. It obviously depends on the condition of the aircraft. If the pilot is in control of the plane but determines that a crash is inevitable, he should head to the closest unpopulated area, reduce speed (etc. etc., there's more to that obviously, just simplifying ), and then eject. If, however, the pilot has lost control of the plane's basic functioning and can no longer alter its path in other words not flying but falling, then he should prioritize escaping before impact.
Without knowing the details it is impossible to make a statement whether the pilot was exhibiting unnecessary bravado or just following ejection protocol. Essentially, civilian casualties on the ground is a grave concern, so a safe ditch point is very important to try to achieve. I will tell you with great confidence, take any fighter pilot in the world, from any air force, in a dire situation he is worried about ditching over population period and he will do everything in his power including putting his life on the line to not bail out over populated areas.