CHUKAI: Questions abound as to how and why the two Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) Hawk 108 pilots died last Thursday in a swamp in Chukai, despite ejecting and having their parachutes deployed.
A probe into the crash by an investigation team, led by Lieutenant-Colonel John Sham, is proving difficult.
Virtually none of the nation’s combat aircraft, unlike most new-generation fighters, carried a black box, which housed a flight data recorder, cockpit voice recorder and crash-survivable memory unit.
Despite the availability of state-of-the-art equipment, powerful radar and tracking satellites, it would take investigators months to determine what transpired.
With the full details of investigations rarely made public by the military, several veteran military fighter pilots and aviation medicine practitioners, speaking on condition of anonymity, gave their views on why combat jets kept crashing.
Major Yazmi Mohamed Yusof, 39, and Major Mohd Hasri Zahari, 31, were killed in the crash.
Both had at least a decade of flying experience under their belts.
The pilots, who were familiar with conducting test flights of newly-serviced aircraft like the Hawk 108, were said to have taken great risks when performing complex manoeuvres before certifying the aircraft fit for combat duty.
“Any fault — either human, mechanical, atmospheric or even sabotage — could have caused dire consequences, even in non-dogfight procedures,” the sources said.
Some argue that both pilots could have lost consciousness when ejecting from the jet fighter at up to 14g (14 times the force of gravity) during a high-speed manoeuvre.
Other factors that could lead to accidents included loss of situational awareness and flight proficiency, disorientation, task misappropriation, loss of flight vision at blind spots, failure of onboard systems, avionics and instruments, and airframe structural defects.
Yazmi was tasked with test-flying the jet after it had spent months in the maintenance hangar for servicing.
A less-senior pilot based in Butterworth was supposed to test the aircraft, but Yazmi, as the 6th Squadron’s commanding officer, had undertaken the responsibility as he was available to certify its airworthiness certificate.
Yazmi had performed a ground test of the aircraft and was scheduled to perform the aerial test with co-pilot Hasri for 45 minutes.
Being an experienced pilot with the Hawks, Yazmi might have attempted to save the 21-year-old aircraft.
An air examiner familiar with such accidents said this might be the reason the aircraft sustained minimal damage and remained intact upon crashing, while the pilots appeared to have bailed out at the 11th hour.