Imagine being 10,000 feet in the air, strapped into a $200 million stealth fighter, and the wheels won’t work. You’re circling an Alaskan airfield while the temperature outside is a bone-chilling -1°F. This isn't a scene from a movie. It's exactly what happened on January 28, 2025, when a U.S. Air Force pilot realized his F-35A Lightning II was having a very bad day.
The situation was tense. Shortly after taking off from Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, the pilot tried to tuck the landing gear away. It wouldn't go. When he tried to put it back down, the nose wheel locked at a weird angle to the left.
The F-35 pilot's 50-minute mid-air call couldn't fix jet issue
Most of us feel stressed when we have to call tech support because the Wi-Fi is acting up. Now, imagine doing that while flying a supersonic jet that’s essentially a flying supercomputer. The pilot ended up on a conference call that lasted nearly an hour. On the other end? Five Lockheed Martin engineers. We’re talking a senior software engineer, a flight safety expert, and three landing gear specialists.
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They were all trying to figure out how to get that nose wheel straight. The F-35 pilot's 50-minute mid-air call couldn't fix jet issue, and honestly, the advice given might have actually made things worse.
The group decided the pilot should try two "touch-and-go" maneuvers. The idea was simple: tap the runway briefly to see if the impact would jar the nose gear back into place.
It backfired. Spectacularly.
Instead of fixing the nose wheel, the jolts caused the left and right main landing gears to freeze up too. Now, the pilot didn't just have a crooked nose wheel; he had no working landing gear at all. But the real "ghost in the machine" moment happened next.
Because of the sensors being jarred, the plane's computer got confused. It actually thought the jet was already on the ground. It flipped into "automated ground-operation mode."
The jet became "uncontrollable." The flight systems started fighting the pilot because they were trying to act like a taxiing car while the plane was still in the air. At that point, there was no saving the bird. The pilot pulled the handle, ejected, and watched $200 million of taxpayer money turn into a fireball on the Alaskan tundra.
What went wrong with the hydraulic fluid?
You’d think a jet this advanced would be immune to something as simple as ice. You'd be wrong. When investigators dug through the wreckage (tail number 19-5535), they found something mind-blowing.
The hydraulic system was filled with water. Well, about a third of it was.
In the extreme cold of a Fairbanks winter, that water turned into ice. This ice jammed the valves in the landing gear system. It turns out, this wasn't just a fluke accident. There was a major breakdown in how the hydraulic fluid was being handled on the base.
Reports suggest a barrel of fluid had been left open to the elements or improperly stored. Someone, somewhere, filled that high-tech jet with "dirty" fluid.
"The investigation revealed that the hydraulic fluid contained about 30% water, whereas it's meant to carry 0%."
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Why tech support couldn't save the day
There's a lot of talk about whether the engineers on that call should have known better. See, Lockheed Martin had actually issued a maintenance bulletin back in April 2024. That document warned that in extreme cold, these specific issues could happen and could make the plane "uncontrollable."
The Accident Investigation Board (AIB) was pretty blunt about it. If the guys on the call had checked that guidance, they probably would have told the pilot to just try a full-stop landing right away or go for a controlled ejection earlier. Instead, they suggested the touch-and-go maneuvers that triggered the software glitch.
It’s a classic case of the "right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing." You have the smartest engineers in the world on the line, but if they aren't looking at the most recent safety warnings, they're just guessing.
The human cost and the "weight-on-wheels" logic
The pilot survived with only minor injuries, which is the most important thing. But the crash highlights a scary reality about modern military tech. The F-35 is so dependent on its software that if a sensor gets "tricked," the pilot can become a passenger in their own cockpit.
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The "weight-on-wheels" logic is designed to keep the plane safe on the ground, but when it triggers at 5,000 feet, you're in deep trouble.
Interestingly, another F-35 at Eielson had a similar icing issue just nine days after this crash. That pilot managed to land safely, probably because they didn't try the same maneuvers that doomed the first jet.
Lessons from the Eielson crash
If you're looking for the "so what" of this story, it's pretty clear. Even the most expensive tech in the world is at the mercy of basic maintenance and human communication.
- Maintenance is everything: You can have a stealth coating and a radar that can see for miles, but if there's water in your lines, you're grounded.
- Software has limits: We need to ensure that pilots have a "manual override" for when the computer thinks it's on the ground but the altimeter says otherwise.
- Communication protocols: Engineers need instant access to every safety bulletin during a crisis call, not just their own expertise.
The Air Force is now looking much closer at how they store hazardous materials and hydraulic fluid in Arctic environments. It’s a harsh reminder that in the world of high-stakes aviation, there is no such thing as a "small" mistake.
If you're curious about how the military is fixing these icing issues, you might want to look into the updated cold-weather flight manuals for the F-35 fleet. Or, if you're a gearhead, check out how hydraulic separators work—it’s a lot more interesting than it sounds when $200 million is on the line.