Air Force identifies pilot killed in Laughlin crash
The pilot killed in the crash of two T-38C trainers last week near Del Rio was a student, 2nd Lt. Anthony D. Wentz, 23, of Falcon, Colo., the Air Force said Monday.
The two other pilots involved in the crash Friday morning on the runway at Laughlin AFB have not been identified. Flown to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, one of them was in critical condition, a hospital spokesman said. The other was treated at Val Verde Regional Medical Center in Del Rio and released.
The pilots were flying a pair of supersonic T-38C Talon aircraft used by instructors to train students learning to be fighter pilots.
“A loss like this affects us all, but one thing we never fail to do in times of crisis is come together, support one another, and respond,” said Col. Craig Prather, 47th Training Wing commander. “Our focus remains on supporting the families involved and our thoughts and prayers continue to be with them and our teammates today.”
The Air Force said the crash was under investigation and offered no explanation of how it happened. Photos taken from a helicopter by a reporter for a Fox TV affiliate and posted on social media showed the jets on either side of a runway, one of them upside down with its landing gear deployed, the other on its belly.
An Air Force mishap report on a fatal crash at Vance AFB two years ago in Enid, Okla., led to the banning of a maneuver in which pilots land their planes in formation. It blamed the incident on pilot error on the part of both the instructor and his student.
That crash also involved a pair of T-38 trainers on Nov. 19, 2019 — two years to the day before last week’s accident at Laughlin. The instructor, Lt. Col. John “Matt” Kincade, 47, and his student pilot, 2nd Lt. Travis Wilkie, 23, died when their plane collided with another T-38 to their right, taking off in formation.
An Air Force mishap report said their aircraft became briefly airborne, rolled rapidly to the right and touched down, skidded, crossed the runway centerline, lifted off again and struck the second plane.
A report in late 2020 by the National Commission on Military Aviation Safety studied more than 6,000 aircraft mishaps across the armed services from fiscal years 2013-18 and concluded pilots had lost proficiency because they hadn’t flown enough.
It also said crews made do with inadequate training and were slammed with administrative duties while struggling to get funding. They endured risky maintenance practices and a crushing operations tempo, a term that refers to the pace of troops training, deploying and returning home to repeat the cycle.
Lack of consistent, reliable funding was the single biggest readiness issue impacting safety.
The report said reversing those trends required four fixes: Slowing that pace of operations, getting pilots into the air more often, giving maintenance crews more time to do their jobs and providing more funding for cash-starved aviation units.