hankyoreh

Poor maintenance caused the crash of a fighter jet off the west coast last month, the Air Force said Monday.

The KF-16 combat jet went down into the West Sea during a training mission near a shooting range in Boryeong, South Chungcheong Province on Feb. 13. Its pilot ejected just before the crash and was rescued.

"After examining the engine of the fighter jet, we concluded the cause of the accident was a maintenance problem," said an investigative team consisting of 13 people from the Air Force and four from Pratt & Whitney, the producer of the engine.

Mechanics did not replace cover plates of the engine with new ones when they last repaired the plane in 2004, a breach of the Time Compliance Technical Orders (TCTO), a method used throughout the Air Force to implement aircraft hardware changes, the team said in a news conference.

Fragments from a broken cover plate damaged and stopped the engine during the flight, it said.

South Korea has acquired more than 130 of the U.S.-made planes since the early 1990s.

It was the fourth accident involving the KF-16 here. The previous ones took place in August and September 1997 and in February 2002. But the causes of the previous three accidents were all proved to be engine problems.
Seoul, March 5 (Yonhap News)