Fleet-Wide Inspections Underway

A Pentagon spokesman said cracks were discovered by Navy maintenance crews in two F/A-18 Hornet jet aircraft last week, prompting the Navy to order a quick inspections of 622 Hornets, nearly its entire fleet, on Friday.

Stars and Stripes reports that Navy officials said the cracks could affect control of the aircraft and called them "a safety-in-flight risk," Lt. Clay Doss said.

While the aircraft models affected were ordered to undergo maintenance within 25 flight hours, Naval Air Systems Command in Patuxent River, MD, did not ground the planes.

The cracks appeared on the "horizontal stabilator actuator support fittings," known as the "bootstraps." "The bootstraps are part of the bones of the aircraft," Doss said. They’re located just forward from where the horizontal tail wing attaches to the airframe.

Three of the aircraft, including the two with cracks, had a missing fastener, which the Navy believes may have caused excessive stress to the component.

"It’s probably an engineering defect. That’s what preliminary analysis is indicating," Doss said.

The Navy says Hornets are able to fly three times as many hours as other Navy tactical aircraft with half the maintenance time. The cracks were detected as engineers performed scheduled high-flight hour inspections of older models, part of the Service Life Extension Program.

FMI: www.navy.mil