Belgian F-16 Ostend

[100arw]

From Belgium Mil:

Today, around noon, one of our aircraft, an F-16 two-seater with tail number FB-20 from Kleine Brogel airbase, was struck by a lightning strike. At that time, the aircraft was carrying out an approach procedure for the military airport in Koksijde as part of a training flight.

During this event, the aircraft suffered a 'Generator Failure' power outage. The Emergency Power Unit (EPU) has started up automatically. This system provides power and hydraulic pressure to the aircraft's essential controls. The plane must then land as quickly as possible. The pilot chose to use the nearest airport for this precautionary landing, namely the civil airport of Ostend. This spare engine uses hydrazine as fuel. This ammonia-smelling fuel that provides a lot of energy is toxic. A specialized fire brigade team from the Koksijde base came to the scene to assist the Ostend colleagues in dealing with this hydrazine incident.

The aircraft landed without further incident and after the intervention of the fire brigade, the pilots got out safely. A technical team is now taking care of the further processing.

P.