Safety procedures not followed before fatal jet crash, Marines say

Safety procedures not followed before fatal jet crash, Marines say

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An F/A-18D military jet crashed in a San Diego neighborhood, Monday Dec., 8, 2008, sparking at least one house fire. The plane crashed shortly before noon Monday as it prepared to land at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, said Ian Gregor, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman.

Audio clips
Excerpt: Lt. Dan Neubauer tells a controller about his situation and says he wants to take the jet to MCAS Miramar (mp3) (55 seconds)
Excerpt: Air traffic controllers discuss the fate of the pilot(mp3) (30 seconds)
Full air traffic control tape from the Dec. 8, 2009 F-18 jet crash (mp3) (48 minutes, 3 seconds)

SAN DIEGO — The Marine jet crash that killed four people in University City on Dec. 8 could have been prevented if the pilot and officers on the ground had followed safety procedures, and if the Marine Corps had stopped flying the plane after noting a fuel problem months earlier, said people who were briefed by the Marine Corps on Tuesday.

At least 10 minutes before Lt. Dan Neubauer's F/A-18D Hornet went down, he was talking to Marine officials about what to do after one engine lost power and the other was possibly failing, according to air traffic control recordings released on the same day.

Neubauer turned down two chances to land his jet at North Island Naval Air Station, a nearby coastal airfield, while he was still offshore. He instead flew farther over heavily populated neighborhoods to attempt an emergency landing at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station.

“Senior officers communicating with the pilot, as well as the pilot himself, did not consult their checklist and follow appropriate procedures that could have prevented the incident altogether,” said Joe Kasper, spokesman for Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, R-Lakeside. Kasper attended a briefing with the Marine Corps on Tuesday morning.

Had they followed standard protocol, they would have realized the severity of the situation and diverted the aircraft to North Island, Kasper recalled the Marine officials saying.

No criminal charges are pending, but four officers – the squadron commander, squadron operations officer, standardization officer and maintenance officer – have been relieved of their duties and nine other Marines have been reprimanded, Kasper said.

Neubauer's status is being reviewed.

Kasper said that even though mechanics had identified the fuel-transfer glitch in Neubauer's jet sometime ago, the Marine Corps flew 146 more sorties with it before the Dec. 8 crash.

The Marine Corps now requires aircraft to be grounded when they have a fuel-transfer problem, which occurs when fuel doesn't flow to the engines.

It also has paid 11 families affected by the crash a total of $147,000.

“I didn't expect such a clear report,” said Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, who also was briefed Tuesday morning by the Marine Corps. “I have confidence in the investigation because they've accepted responsibility.”

Marine officials have scheduled a news conference for 2 p.m. Tuesday to go over their findings.

Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration made the recordings public in response to Freedom of Information Act requests by The San Diego Union-Tribune and other media organizations. It twice delayed the release because of pressure from the Marine Corps, which asked for additional time to complete its investigation into the crash.

The FAA recordings show that Neubauer understood his predicament shortly after leaving the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln around 11:30 a.m. The carrier was operating off the coast of Mexico southwest of San Diego.

Neubauer manually turned off his first engine because of the fuel-transfer trouble.

There was no indication that he considered ditching his $40 million jet in the ocean. He tried unsuccessfully to establish contact with the aircraft carrier, Kasper said.

An FAA air traffic controller at Miramar offered to direct Neubauer's jet – with the call sign SHUTR25 – toward Runway 36, the main eastbound runway at North Island. That approach would have kept the aircraft over water until it touched down.

Visibility was good under mostly cloudy skies at the time, weather records show.

“I'm actually going to try to make it to Miramar if possible,” Neubauer replied as he flew at an altitude of about 13,000 feet nearly 20 miles south of North Island.

Two minutes later, the controller directed Neubauer on a path that would let him fly by North Island on his way toward Miramar.

The recordings don't reveal whether Neubauer acted on his own in bypassing North Island or if he was acting under orders from his commanders.

But he told the controller, “I'm coordinating with people on the ground to figure out what we're doing.”
About seven minutes before the crash, Neubauer asked the controller to route him straight toward Miramar's Runway 6, an approach over La Jolla and University City that is rarely used.

The controller asked whether the pilot would need emergency-response units at the airfield.
“Affirm,” Neubauer replied.

In his last transmission, Neubauer told the controller that he had the Miramar runway in sight.

According to witnesses, the second engine failed as the F-18 flew low over the intersection of Genesee Avenue and Governor Drive just before noon, about two miles short of the Miramar runway.

Neubauer ejected safely seconds before the jet nosed down and crashed just west of Interstate 805 on Cather Avenue near Huggins Street, where it destroyed two homes and damaged three others.

The four dead – Youngmi Lee, 36, a nurse; her daughters Grace, 15 months, and Rachel, 2 months; and her mother, Seokim Kim, 60 – were part of a family of Korean immigrants.

Within two minutes of the crash, another pilot reported seeing smoke on the ground short of the runway.
Eighteen minutes later, a military air traffic controller at the Miramar tower contacted the FAA traffic-control supervisor, who also is located at Miramar.

“SHUTR25 has crashed, actually,” the military controller said.

“You're kidding me,” the FAA supervisor responded.

The crash caused fear and anger in University City. Residents there, and in other neighborhoods in Miramar's flight paths, said the Marines shouldn't have risked sending a disabled aircraft over a populated area when North Island had ample facilities to accommodate the jet.

In the days following the crash, Miramar's commander, Col. Christopher O'Connor, said that Neubauer correctly followed emergency landing procedures by heading to Miramar. He and other Marine officials said it is safe to fly an F/A-18 on one engine, and they cited the long odds against a double-engine failure.

During a public meeting in University City three days after the crash, O'Connor said Neubauer had done everything possible to avoid casualties on the ground.

“The pilot was seconds from crashing (his jet) into a canyon,” O'Connor said. “He waited until the absolute last minute.”

Don Yoon, Lee's husband and father of the two girls who died in the crash, had called Neubauer a “national treasure” during a news conference the day after the tragedy.

“I don't have any hard feelings,” Yoon said at the time. “I know he did everything he could.”

On Tuesday, Yoon's family members referred inquiries to their attorney, Raymond Feldman in Santa Monica, who did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Tina Neubauer of Yorba Linda, the pilot's mother, sounded close to tears when asked how her son was coping in the aftermath of the crash.

“This is a tough time,” she said.

James Neubauer, the father, said his family had no further comment.

“We are awaiting the (Marine Corps') press conference,” he said.