Texas Guard F-16 crashes near Traverse City after a possible bird strike

An F-16 from the Texas Air National Guard's 149th Fighter Wing crashed in a field in Blair Township, Grand Traverse County, on Thursday afternoon. The single pilot ejected. Michigan State Police said the pilot was in stable condition at a local hospital and that no one on the ground was hurt.

State Rep. John Roth said the pilot was taken to Munson Medical Center in Traverse City and was conscious and alert. Video from the site showed a fireball and a tall column of black smoke beside homes south of Traverse City. County emergency managers ordered people within one mile of County Road 633 and Jefferson Place to leave because of a hazardous fuel spill.

What the radio said

Two F-16s were flying a visual low-level route, VR634, under the call signs BUCK 11 and BUCK 12. Audio recorded by LiveATC captured BUCK 11 telling Minneapolis Center there was a possible mayday and that the wingman may have taken a bird. A controller said it looked as if the jet had lost an engine. BUCK 11 later told the centre to alert emergency services because the other pilot would have to get out over the town below.

The jet is based at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. The 149th, known as the Lone Star Gunfighters, had posted the day before that student and instructor pilots were heading to Michigan for Operation Northern Cactus, an exercise built around flying from an austere field. They were using the Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center.

The Texas Military Department called it a routine training mission that experienced an incident. The wing said the pilot ejected successfully and that the crash is under investigation. Michael Kroll of the Michigan Department of Military and Veterans Affairs confirmed an F-16 accident in the Traverse City area.

What is not yet known

A bird strike is the working theory from the wingman's call. It is not a finding. Investigators will recover the engine and look for remains of a bird, for compressor damage and for any other failure that could look the same from the cockpit.

F-16s have a long record of bird ingestions on low-level routes. Northern Michigan in September is on a migration path. The exercise put student pilots on those routes. That combination is why the radio traffic will be part of the accident report.

No houses were reported damaged. The evacuation was about jet fuel and smoke, not about wreckage in a living room. For the 149th the immediate cost is one airframe and a pilot in hospital at the start of a deployment-prep exercise. For Blair Township the immediate cost is a burned field and a fuel cleanup. The cause file opens with a possible bird and a successful ejection. It does not close there.