Gripen plane catches fire on runway

Published: 6 Aug 09 15:18 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/21152/20090806/

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A Jas Gripen fighter plane caught fire after an emergency landing at Kallinge airport in southeastern Sweden at 2.30pm on Thursday. The pilot escaped unharmed and was able to make his own way out of the burning plane.

"It's reasonable to assume that he's shaken," chief of staff Nils-Göran Bernebring told news agency TT.

The fire took hold in the plane's landing gear when the vehicle had touched ground and was still in motion.

The landing runway has been sealed until further notice. It is not yet known why the pilot was forced to make an emergency landing.

Local wing commander Mats Helgesson described the pilot as very experienced.

"He was out on a flight exercise and was on his way back to Kallinge," he said.

Helgesson added that there was no information as yet regarding whether or not the pilot had alerted staff on the ground to any difficulties.

Thursday's crash was the sixth such incident involving the Saab-made planes since their launch in 1993.

TT/The Local (news@thelocal.se/08 656 6518)

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20:53 August 6, 2009 by Nilspet
Unfortunately this will send bad news to Brazil. It might have been just the pilot's error but JAS Gripen has crashed too many times. There are only 230 or so in use but at least 6 have crashed...that is a big number!
21:40 August 6, 2009 by bettan1
You think this one incident alone sends a bad message ??? What about all the other history of failures, scandal, bribery charges, fraud , etc that this online Swedish news website has brought to our attention over the past two years ??? Do Ya think that just maybe they should just hang it up and try and improve on their auto manufacturing ??? After all, they are the nation of peace!!!
22:20 August 6, 2009 by Dorset
Airfighters crash dot end. Why go all irrationale over such blatantly obvious and easily verfiable fact. I.e a pilot F-22 pilot died earlier this year.
11:12 August 7, 2009 by 1712x
"Thursday's CRASH was the sixth such incident involving the Saab-made..."

Do i miss anything? the first sentence of the article says "plane caught fire after an emergency landing"...so, did it crash or not? as far as i know "crash" and "emergency landing" are not synonyms. Can anyone correct me? :-)
13:00 August 7, 2009 by berto
There is a connection between this technical failure and the incident 17 november 2008 when the nosewheel failed on another Gripen jet.

There is no way a modern JAS-39C would be able to land like this because of pilot error. Unless the pilot was suffering from a medical condition or was truly incompetent.

As we all remember the 17 november 2008 incident was very rapidly hushed up by the Swedish Air Force and the "individual aircraft" was blamed.

Yet here we are with another failure landing gear failure.

The truth is SAAB has a complex manufacturing error on its hands here with the C & NG variants. It manifests itself as a landing gear malfunction, but its roots lie in the electrical subsystems. It has been deemed too costly to correct internally and the risks for it to happen are not high enough for them to warrant the extra spendings.

The Swedish Air Force is now trying to cover it up to save Swedish face on the export market.

Potential export customers: BEWARE!
13:09 August 7, 2009 by berto2
..here we are with another failure landing gear failure.

The truth is SAAB has a complex manufacturing error on its hands here with the C & NG variants. It manifests itself as a landing gear malfunction, but its roots lie in the electrical subsystems. It has been deemed too costly to correct internally and the risks for it to happen are not high enough for them to warrant the extra spendings.

The Swedish Air Force is now trying to cover it up to save Swedish face on the export market.

Potential export customers: BEWARE!
16:02 August 7, 2009 by engel
berto,

Unfortunately it looks like you might be right:

http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/fordon_motor/flygplan/article614384.ece

The first eyewitnessreports suggest the nosewheel did infact collapse like in 2008, and that would mean the Swedish Air Force lied to cover up the truth.

There does indeed appear to be a problem with the Gripen landing gear.

I'd hate it if some other pilot lost his life because of a Swedish cover up. It just wouldn't be right.

Heads up everyone!
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