SHIT!!!! TWO F-18's Just Crashed in Mid Air and went down!!
 

Damn. Here in Oregon two F-18s crashed into eachother and went into the Columbia River just under an hour ago

no matter what, you put idiots in things like F-18s, they are bound to kill someone or themselves.

men cant be trusted to ride motorcycles on the freeway without doing 100+, you think they are safe with jets?

buahaha

wow.. that sucks. any news ?

nothing on any of the major news sites yet, interesting.

playing chicken ?

That sucks.. I love Oregon. Do you ever go out to cannon beach, where they filmed goonies. I love that place.

Did the pilots survive???

PORTLAND ? Two Navy F-18 fighter jets collided over the Columbia River in northeastern Oregon this afternoon, a Federal Aviation Administration official said.
FAA spokeswoman Nancy Corey said two parachutes were seen, but it wasn't clear whether the pilots had ejected safely.

One of the pilots landed in the river, while the other landed within Arlington city limits, according to Deputy Chris Fitzsimmons with the Gilliam County Sheriff's office.

Rescue personnel were en route to the crash, Corey said.

Witnesses reported hearing a "big boom," then seeing a fiery explosion in the sky, said Fitzsimmons, the agency's emergency management coordinator.

Fitzsimmons said debris from the planes landed as far away as Interstate 84, eight miles south of Arlington.

Yvonne Arbogast, a spokeswoman for the Mid-Columbia Medical Center in The Dalles, said she "did not know yet," whether the pilots would be sent to that hospital.

"They haven't arrived anywhere yet," she said.

The F-18 has either one or two seats depending on the version. It was first test-flown in 1978.

It is used by the Navy and Marine Corps and several countries including Canada, Australia, Spain, Kuwait, Switzerland, Finland and Malaysia.

In the American arsenal the F-18 replaced the F-4 Phantom II, the A-7 Corsair and the A-6 Intruder as those planes were phased out of service in the 1990s.

They are designed for air-to-air and air-to-ground combat.

Three F18's now were involved now.

But it appears only one went down in the river.

Damn.. Quite a site for the guys fishing and boating in the river!

YOu do realize that flying a jet is safer than driving a car down the freeway?

my point was you put that much power in someones hands these things are bound to happen.

hmmm.

not sure if anyone survived.

But they say the medical examiner was called.

And there is a search becasue more Jets are flying overhead.

People said they saw several parachuits in the air as well..

im sure they got out.

Maybe he didn't like the color.

Listen to these guys (cockpit voice recording).
They are laughing with one of the flight attendants about the voice recorder and it's purpose, one pilot is joking around that it is used to listen to the dating habbits of the pilots and give something to listen to their children.
About 20 minutes later they are in take-off roll, engine failure, captain fails to act the proper way (trim it out and go overboost on the remaining engine or abort) and they crash.

Warning: don't listen to this tape if you have a fear of flying.

Tape

Twat.
They don't put "idiots" in F-18s as they train all the "idiots" out first.

Hope the pilots are ok and no casualties on the ground.

statistically speaking, flying as a passenger in a jet is safer then driving a car.

if you take an idiot driver and make him a pilot, he becomes more dangerous.

True. The training is fucking hard. But us webmasters can hardly realise things are hard anymore.

fuck that sucks...I almost feel like driving out there with my camera if it wasn't rush hour! time to turn on the local news

I wasnt talking about being a passenger on an airplane. Not anyone can be a pilot and that is the reason that flying is safer than driving.

Want to know how to reduce deaths on the road? Dont keep lowering the legal alcohol limit, thats just a fucking numbers game, lower it this much, well have this much more money in fines and the state can do its budget. Make it harder to get a drivers license, and deaths will drop.

damn that sucks

damn hope the pilots are ok... I think that's about 40 million a jet that just got lost.

Sucks to hear that, hope they had full coverage insurance

Any news on the pilots?

Only report I see that mentions casualties:

Two Navy Pilots Killed In Midair Collision

By Fisher News

PORTLAND -
Two military jets crashed into the Columbia River in Eastern Oregon Wednesday afternoon.

The FAA says two Navy F-18 fighter jets crashed around 2:30 p.m. near Arlington Oregon.

Those jets are based out of Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego and the fighter group is in Portland on a training mission.

Witnesses told KATU that they heard a loud explosion and many others saw a fireball above the river before the fighters tumbled into the water.

"We saw an explosion and a boom, and we saw a plane coming down in flames," said one witness.

Witnesses also told KATU they saw multiple parachutes in the sky after the crash.

"One man parachuting, something like a canopy spinning in the sky, to the east of that I saw another man parachuting, " said Amanda Wilson, the wife of an Arlington Sheriff's Deputy. "I do know that one man landed on the Oregon side of the Columbia River, and another one landed in Arlington, and another one landed on the Washington side of the river."

The crash happened east of the Navy's test bombing range five miles southwest Boardman.

Although the site was decommissioned in 2000, some planes continue to use the low level flight routes in the area.

The site features mobile targets for practice by Navy jets, particularly those out of Whidbey Island in Washington.

(Reporters from our sister station in Portland, KATU, contributed this report.)

That sux

That sucks. :(


-Greg

As sad as i am that people died, you just got to think about how long they would have survived anyways. I mean how big is the fucking sky and how much traffic is there??

That certainly sucks :(

Hopefully there are survivors.

Sweet, wish I woulda saw it

thats no good

bad news...:(

You are mixing these millitary jets up with airline traffic. They where probably flying in formation, wich they usually do, it doesn't need much to have a mid-air collision when flying in formation. A good wind gust or wind shear might be enough.