A civilian aircraft collided with a sitting MV-22 Osprey last month in San Diego, resulting in millions' worth of damage to the tiltrotor aircraft.
A civilian aircraft collided with a sitting MV-22 Osprey last month in San Diego, resulting in millions' worth of damage to the tiltrotor aircraft.
The Class A mishap, defined as one that involves fatalities, damage totaling $2 million or more, or a complete loss of the aircraft, happened May 30 at Brown Field, a Marine Corps official told Military.com. The incident was highlighted in a recently released Naval Safety Center accident report.
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According to the official, the pilot of the civilian plane lost control of the aircraft, traveling across the runway and eventually impacting the Osprey. An official with Brown field did not immediately respond with information about what the make of the civilian plane was.
"Aircraft routinely operate from Brown Airfield for training, 1st Lt Zachary Bodner, a spokesman for the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, said Tuesday.
An investigation into the incident is pending, he added.
The Marine Corps later confirmed the V-22 was assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 163, out of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.
An official from the city of San Diego said an investigation was ongoing, but there were no injuries and no airport buildings were damaged.
"While the investigation of the May 30, 2020, civilian aircraft and parked US Marine Osprey surface incident is currently underway, the City of San Diego will remain committed to maintaining the highest standards of safety at the Brown Field Municipal Airport," Racquel Vasquez, senior public information officer for the city, said.
In December, the Marine Corps received its first modified MV-22, with a modernized and streamlined configuration.
The "C" upgrade, under the Common Configuration-Readiness and Modernization (CC-RAM) program, moves more than 70 configurations into fewer than 17 variants for the aircraft, manufacturer Bell-Boeing said in a release at the time.
Naval Air Systems Command -- which oversees the Osprey program -- gave the joint venture company $57 million in 2017 to begin the CC-RAM program.
In 2019, NAVAIR awarded Bell-Boeing another $146 million contract to upgrade additional MV-22 aircraft.
-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.
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