U.S. Air Force seeks refund for training planes from British company

April 10, 2000
Web posted at: 11:18 p.m. EDT (0318 GMT)

In this story: Air Force grounded plane 3 years ago Engines could be replaced again RELATED STORIES, SITES

From Correspondent Charles Zewe

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (CNN) -- After six years, six deaths and spending $40 million, the United States Air Force now wants to sell a training plane -- the T-3 Firefly -- back to the British company that made it.

Mark Dostal was one of the first to die in a crash involving the T-3 Firefly. He was 20 years old and a junior at the Air Force Academy in February 1995 when he flew the plane.

Investigators said the plane spun out of control, killing Dostal and his instructor. Pilot error was the official cause of the crash.

Dostal's father remembers him as "a perfect kid" who always wanted to be a fighter pilot.

"He knew what he wanted, he knew what his goal was," Don Dostal said of his late son.

The Dostal crash came only one month after the Air Force began using the Fireflies, which had been bought from Slingsby Aviation, a British manufacturer.

The military spent $32 million acquiring 110 of the piston-driven, high-performance aerobatic trainers meant to test whether pilot candidates could endure the rigors of jet training.

Three years ago, following two more crashes and the deaths of two cadets and their instructors, the Air Force grounded the T-3.

Investigators discovered the plane's engine had simply stopped 66 times on the ground and in the air.

Critics contend the engine -- a more powerful version of the plane's original power plant installed at the insistence of Air Force brass -- was too big for the T-3 airframe and made the plane unstable.

The Air Force spent $8 million trying to fix the T-3 before giving up.

Now it will crate up the planes and ship them back to the manufacturer in England, where they'll be refurbished and sold in Europe."

The refurbishing may include replacing engines with the less powerful ones originally designed for the plane.

The Air Force is trying to get Slingsby to buy back the T-3s, but at what military sources say is a fraction of their original cost.

Pilot training, meanwhile, has been turned over to private instructors.

Parents of two other cadets killed in T-3 crashes are suing Slingsby, claiming the plane was dangerous and the company knew it.

While both the Air Force and Slingsby have said the T-3 was, and is, safe the Air Force will not comment on why it is abandoning the plane.

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Sliingsby Aviation - Firefly, Basic Training Solutions
U. S. Air Force
U.S. Air Force Academy

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