Follow-Up

By Mark Thompson/Washington

The Air Force last week grounded forever the training plane that killed three rookie pilots and their instructors at the Air Force Academy. The service spent $32 million on 110 of the prop-driven T-3 Fireflies in the early 1990s. Its goal: to put fledgling pilots into acrobatic maneuvers that would screen out pilots who would have later failed at more demanding--and costlier--jets.

But after the six deaths at the academy, from 1995 to 1997, the Air Force "temporarily suspended" the T-3 training program and spent $6 million trying to fix the plane's engine woes. Air Force headquarters ordered a thorough investigation into the T-3 following questions raised by TIME in January 1998. Defending the plane after the article ran, GENERAL LLOYD NEWTON, chief of Air Force training, pledged to fly one of the planes before another rookie pilot did.

On Oct. 1 Newton told top Air Force officials that the T-3 fixes wouldn't be completed for up to two years, and the brass ordered the program scrapped. "For me, obviously, it's too late," said LINDA FISCHER, whose son Dan died in the first T-3 accident. "But it's good to know that no one else at the academy will suffer because of that plane."

--By Mark Thompson/Washington