NATIONAL SECURITY

Navy orders safety pause for aircraft after deadly California crashes

By Annabelle Timsit
June 12, 2022 at 6:50 a.m. EDT

The U.S. Naval Air Forces has ordered a one-day “safety pause” for its aircraft after a string of crashes in California this month led to the deaths of a Navy pilot and five Marines. ... The pause will come into effect Monday and affect all Navy aviation units that are not deployed, the Naval Air Forces said Saturday in a news release.

“As a result of recent crashes involving U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aircraft, Commander, Naval Air Forces has directed all non-deployed Navy aviation units to conduct a safety pause on June 13 in order to review risk-management practices and conduct training on threat and error-management processes,” it said. ... Deployed units will do the same as soon as possible, it added.

“In order to maintain the readiness of our force, we must ensure the safety of our people remains one of our top priorities,” Cmdr. Zachary Harrell, public affairs officer for the Naval Air Forces, told the Los Angeles Times.

A Navy pilot was killed on June 3 when the fighter jet he was flying as part of a routine training mission crashed in a remote, unpopulated area of the Mojave Desert in Southern California, the Navy said. The incident was being investigated as of last Sunday, it added. ... On Wednesday, an MV-22B Osprey aircraft conducting routine flight training crashed near Glamis, Calif., just north of the Mexican border, killing all five Marines onboard, the Marine Corps said. The service members ranged in age from 19 to 33.

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Andrew Jeong in Seoul and Alex Horton contributed to this report.

By Annabelle Timsit
Annabelle Timsit is a breaking news reporter for The Washington Post's London hub, covering news as it unfolds in the United States and around the world during the early morning hours in Washington. Twitter https://twitter.com/BelleTimsit