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Marine Corps families say Osprey is ‘unsafe and unairworthy’ in lawsuit over deadly 2022 crash
rangerrebew:
Marine Corps families say Osprey is ‘unsafe and unairworthy’ in lawsuit over deadly 2022 crash
The families of four Marines who died in a 2022 MV-22 Osprey crash say Boeing, Bell Textron and engine-maker Rolls Royce lied about the plane's safety.
BY MATT WHITE | PUBLISHED MAY 23, 2024 12:49 PM EDT
The families of four Marines who died when their MV-22 Osprey seized up and crashed on a routine training flight say the companies that built the troubled plane made “intentionally” or “recklessly false statements” about its safety, and put the Marines into an “unsafe and unairworthy aircraft.”
In a federal lawsuit filed Thursday in San Diego, the families of four Marines killed on Swift 11 — an Osprey flight that crashed in 2022 after suffering catastrophic engine failure during routine training in California — say aerospace giants Boening, Bell Textron, and Rolls Royce “supplied false information about the safety of the aircraft” to government and military officials.
Boeing and Bell Textron are the two lead contractors who build the Osprey. Rolls Royce builds the Osprey’s engines. A Marine Corps investigation of the crash found that the $90 million aircraft suffered a “hard clutch engagement,” or HCE failure within its transmission, which caused its engines to fail, a catastrophic failure that gave the crew no chance to survive.
“There were no prior indications of an impending dual HCE event, no steps that [Swift 11’s pilots] could have taken to prevent its occurrence, and no means of recovery once the compound emergency commenced,” investigators said. The report also cleared maintenance troops at Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 364 of any responsibility, deciding that no mechanical fix would have prevented the HCE.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/osprey-lawsuit-marines-corps-unsafe/
Cyber Liberty:
I didn't like the Osprey since they started testing it, for this reason. There are flaws somewhere in the tilt-rotor design, and it's been killing Marines ever since.
rangerrebew:
Lawsuit alleges contractors lied about V-22’s safety
The suit, filed by the families of Marines killed in a 2022 crash, says the tiltrotor aircraft don’t meet government safety specifications.
AUDREY DECKER | MAY 23, 2024 05:57 PM ET
Family members of Marines killed in a V-22 Osprey crash two years ago are suing Boeing, Bell Textron, and Rolls Royce—accusing the companies of knowing the aircraft was unsafe and not disclosing it to the Pentagon.
The companies made “recklessly false statements” about the Osprey, leading five service members to fly in an “unsafe and unairworthy aircraft,” according to allegations in a complaint filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. Everyone on board the plane was killed when it crashed in a remote training area in California.
A Marine Corps investigation found the June 8, 2022 crash was caused by a gear problem, specifically a “dual hard clutch engagement” that caused the engine and the interconnect drive system to fail. The service has been aware of the hard clutch engagement problem in Ospreys since 2010, and the crash was the 16th time it had happened since then, Marines said last year. However, the June 2022 crash was the first time anyone died as an apparent result of the issue, the Marines said.
Air Force Special Operations Command grounded its V-22s for a few weeks in 2022 because of several accidents that involved hard clutch engagements; the Marine Corps did not ground its Ospreys at that time.
The flight was part of a routine training operation called Swift 11.
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2024/05/lawsuit-alleges-contractors-lied-about-v-22s-safety/396862/
rustynail:
The thing just does not look right.
PeteS in CA:
existing thread about this story, https://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php/topic,532564.0.html
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