In a statement to NBC News on Friday, a Navy spokesman confirmed that the update of the Super Stallion with technology is “prohibitive cost” due to the remaining useful life of the aircraft.
The Marines have been using super stallions to transport heavy equipment, supplies and troops for more than 30 years, according to the Navy, of which it is part of Marines’s body. It will cost almost $ 72 million to replace the super stallion destroyed in the accident, according to the research report.
“The research team of this accident worked thoroughly, thoroughly evaluating the possible scenarios and simulations to draw conclusions from the available data and analysis,” said the spokesman for the third wing of marine aircraft.
However, the newest variant of Marines’ body helicopters, called CH-53K King Stallion, is equipped with a shock survivor data recorder with voice recording capacity, and is expected to replace the old Super Stallion fleet for fiscal year 2032, a spokesman said.
And the Marines announced in July 2023 that they would begin to integrate a high temperature flight data recorder, at high temperature and high temperature in all its MV-22B fishermen eagles after another fatal incident.
The father’s impulse to update federal outdated technology occurs after a series of aviation disasters this year, including the most fatal American plane crash in almost a quarter of a century. On January 29, a black hawk from the army crashed into a commercial plane in the air near Washington, DC, killing the 67 people aboard the plane and the helicopter.
The army helicopter had a black box, which the authorities said they had recovered in good condition.
During that investigation, Langen said: “There were many questions that were answered.” The researchers were able to completely inform the reporters with what they had and what they were still considering less than a month after the disaster.
“We are never going to have that,” said Langen.
Throughout the country, in the midst of close calls and equipment malfunction, worried pilots and air traffic controls are also imploring the Federal Aviation Administration that fixes its aging infrastructure.
The call to change follows the scrutiny of the super stallion on repeated mechanical failures.
In 2014, a super stallion that transported 25 members of the service crashed due to the catastrophic failure of one of its engines, although all passengers survived. Four years later, four Marines were killed when his super stallion crashed during a training mission in southern California.
Marine investigation found that the 2018 accident was caused by a defective part, according to a lawsuit filed by the Marines families against the supplier and the manufacturer of the piece. The case was resolved and the agreement was confidential, according to Dave Casey, San Diego’s lawyer who represents the pilots.
The February 2024 accident that killed Langen’s son was not the result of a material or mechanical failure of any component in the aircraft, the researchers said, although they said that the helicopter engine caused the light activated erroneously earlier in the day due to an frayed cable.
The researchers made some recommendations for marine leadership, including the clarification of the vago language in the protocols and the determination of the best way to discipline the officer in command of the squad to authorize the flight, but did not address the lack of data that hindered their research.
“As a father, you want to know what happened,” said Langen.
The five members of the heavy marine helicopter squad 361 took off from the Imperial County Airport, where they were refrained from a flight before Nevada, and went to their home at the air station of the Marines Miramar Corps in San Diego shortly after 10 pm on February 6, 2024, according to the research report.
There were three pilots on board: Captain Miguel Nava, 28; Captain Benjamin Maulton, 27; and Captain Jack Casey, 26. Also on board was Lance CPL. Donovan Davis, 21, who was recently promoted.
Sergeant Alec Langen, 23, was the chief of the crew, responsible for the safety of passengers and another load, as well as the maintenance on the flight. He had just married a month before, his father said.
And Nava, from Traverse City, Michigan, had become a father, welcoming a baby with his wife about four months before, his family told NBC News.
About 30 minutes from their flight, everyone crashed into a mountain crest near Pine Valley, California.
Search and rescue equipment on 10 hours To find their bodies in a remote area covered with snow. At least two of them were killed instantly, and one was completely unrecognizable, found in a group of fuel for flame aircraft, according to the report.
“The most difficult part to read was that the five placed there until 8 in the morning,” said Langen.
The deterioration of climatic conditions should have indicated to the crew that it was not feasible to fly safely, the researchers said, but they could not “identify an explanation” why they took off.
Immediately after the accident, Davis’s father said the family was “struggling to understand the operational need to fly in one of the worst storms in the history of southern California.”
Gregory Davis had asked the Department of Defense to carry out an exhaustive investigation on the circumstances behind the decisions that led to the accident “so that we can have some understanding and closing for the seemingly meaningless loss of our son and brother.”
In November 2024, the team in command of the team was fired after the officials determined that “he exhibited a poor trial” and “exceeded his authority” when approved the flight, according to the report.
The researchers said that it should have taken more than two minutes to talk to the pilot about the climatic conditions and their planned route, and that it should have sought the approval of flights of a higher, but they did not blame him for the accident.
Langen said he and his wife “never wanted their fingers to be pointed out.” They just wanted answers of why they no longer had their son “bigger than life”, which rose on most people with 6 feet and 5 inches, they always had a smile and followed in the footsteps of their veteran father.
To find more clarity, Langen said he studied autopsy reports and the investigation report of 1,140 pages, which was sometimes written to a large extent. He also examined the heartbreaking photos of the accident and visited the accident site.
That only produced more heartbreak.
Instead, Langen left his son to rest without knowing what happened in his last moments. The family celebrated its funeral at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where officials briefly closed the airspace to honor a man who had served for seven years and planned to make a race like Marina, Langen said.
When he died, Alec Langen was just three weeks after being transferred to a safer job, said his father.
