It’s easy for the general public to think of our modern fighter planes with their highly advanced technology and our pilot’s modern training techniques as being immune to accidents and mishaps. As a future fighter pilot, you know better. I’ve often told my own stories about my close calls in training mishaps.

When you are training fly in a high performance fighter for the mission of defending your country and its allies from enemy attack, these things can and sometimes do happen.

What gets me sometimes though is how the media jumps on every single military aircraft mishap like it’s big news when even more lives are crippled or lost among our ground troops. It’s just as bad in the civilian sphere too.

There are literally thousands more car crashes than there are plane crashes, but plane crashes are covered far more extensively.

Why is that? Is it because they’re more ‘spectacular’?

On the other hand, I suppose it could be worse. In our Afterburner Club call a few days ago, I talked a little about how little regard other countries like North Korea have for the lives of their pilots. It may be a pain in the butt that every single one of our jet crashes gets in the news, but heck, at least we CARE! North Korean or Chinese pilots don’t have that luxury.

The point is that as tragic as it is when one of our pilots dies in a crash, it is no worse than the death of any other soldier who gives it all and loses his life for his country. What you as future fighter pilots should take from this is that training is essential regardless of whatever type of plane you are flying. If this can happen to an F-22, then you can bet your rent that it can happen to an older F/-18, F-16, or A-10.

The best thing we can do to honor our fellow fallen pilots is to learn from whatever mistakes that caused them to crash and move on with our mission.

What kind of things do you think we can learn from military aircraft accidents? How can we apply those to make ourselves better and safer pilots?