DATE: Tuesday, September 23, 1997           TAG: 9709230228

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: HAMPTON                           LENGTH:   79 lines

FLIGHT LINE QUIET AT LANGLEY AIR FORCE STANDS DOWN FOR A DAY; 3 OTHER BRANCHES TO FOLLOW SUIT

The Air Force's main combat force spent a full business day outside the cockpit and inside squadron bays and hangars Monday, thinking about safety and accident prevention as it observed a self-imposed grounding in the wake of several recent air crashes.

Gen. Richard Hawley, commander of the Air Combat Command at Langley - the Air Force's primary provider of air combat forces - said the day's goal was to ensure the safety of its people and the preservation of its combat capability through aggressive accident prevention.

``We must step back from the day-to-day pressures of the mission and spend a day identifying and quantifying the risks associated with everything we do, then devise practical ways to mitigate those risks,'' Hawley said in a statement at his Hampton headquarters.

The Navy, Marine Corps and Army are scheduled to take a similar one-day pause before the end of this week. Defense Secretary William Cohen last week ordered a military-wide safety stand-down for ``a period of reflection'' on safety.

This is the first-ever suspension of all military pilot training. Cohen's order does not affect operational flights such as those over Iraq and in support of peacekeeping in Bosnia.

An Air Force B-1 bomber on a training mission crashed Friday night in Montana, killing all four crew members. That, plus a series of other Air Force accidents, prompted Hawley to move up his command's stand-down, originally planned for later this week. He is responsible for the pilots and air crews of about 1,000 aircraft, plus another 700 in the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserves.

Other major commands within the Air Force - the Air Mobility Command and the Air Education and Training Command - will schedule their safety briefings this week.

``A lot of the day was spent in discussion,'' said Lt. Patricia Lang, a spokeswoman for the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley, where about 40 F-15 Eagle fighters were shut down.

``It was letting people raise issues about what's going right, what's going wrong, what we need to fix or improve,'' she said. ``It was a chance for the wing to step back, take a look at how it operates and make sure we are doing all that we can to be safe.''

Langley is home to three squadrons of F-15s. One squadron, the 71st Tactical Fighter Squadron, is deployed to Saudi Arabia and was not affected by the stand-down.

But the 27th and 94th are at Langley, and they were prevented from flying any training missions Monday. On Langley's uncharacteristically quiet tarmac, squadron members spent the day in safety briefings.

Langley has lost only one F-15 in the past several years. The pilot safely ejected in March 1996 while flying over Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

East Coast-based Navy squadrons will observe their safety stand-down at their discretion before Friday.

Except for a recent F/A-18 Hornet crash in the Persian Gulf recently, the Navy's safety record was considered excellent.

``We have been having an extremely good year,'' said Cmdr. Joe Gradisher, a spokesman for the Atlantic Fleet Naval Air Force, which manages about 1,400 aircraft.

``Until the F/A-18 crashed into the Persian Gulf, we had gone 184 days without a Class A mishap,'' he said. A Class A mishap is any accident causing a fatality or damage in excess of $1 million.

Gradisher said his command is working toward its second-safest year ever. So far, in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, the Atlantic Fleet's air arm has experienced five Class A accidents of 14 Navy-wide.

The first in the military's series of recent crashes occurred Sept. 13, when an Air Force C-141 transport crashed off the coast of Africa. The next day, an F-117A stealth fighter broke up in flight at an air show in Maryland and the crash of an F/A-18 in Oman.

The day after that, a Marine Corps Hornet crashed off North Carolina. In addition, two planes from the New Jersey Air National Guard collided off New Jersey last Tuesday. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

ASSOCIATED PRESS

F-15s line the tarmac at Langley Air Force Base Monday after the Air

Force grounded all but operational fights for a day of concentration

on safety after a rash of military aircraft mishaps.

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