The Supreme Court has confirmed the sentence of three months and one day in prison against a captain of the Air and Space Army who had been convicted of causing serious damage to his aircraft, with a cost close to 400,000 euros, as reported by Confilegal. The accident occurred after the pilot’s decision to modify, without authorization, the route of his fighter plane to avoid impact with a flock of birds, as he himself justified.
The event in question took place, on July 3, 2020, during a training mission called Ground Attackin which two fighters participated F-18 of the 15th Wing of the Zaragoza air base, where maneuvers are carried out at very low altitude. “In this type of training missions, we try to make the situation as realistic as possible. This, using the lower limit of the established minimum heights on a regular basis,” explains the Supreme Court ruling.
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The sentence, issued by the Third Territorial Military Court and confirmed by the Military Chamber of the Supreme Court under sentence 19/2024, establishes that the captain, in an attempt to avoid a group of birds, descended to the 70 feet tall, well below the minimum safety limit established at 300 feet. This reckless act, which lasted only five seconds, resulted in him hitting a power line cable, which subsequently fell into a nearby reservoir.
In this way, the Supreme Court has rejected the appeal presented by the captain, in which he alleged that he had descended below what was allowed because “I had seen birds” and sought to avoid colliding with them. However, the court has declared that there is insufficient evidence to show that such a maneuver was necessary or that the sighting of the birds justified non-compliance with air safety regulations.
Furthermore, judges Jacobo Barja de Quiroga López (president), Clara Martínez de Careaga y García, José Alberto Fernández Rodera, Fernando Marín Castán and Ricardo Cuesta del Castillo have pointed out that this maneuver, far from preventing an accident, significantly increased the risk of collision. This descent “would not prevent encounters with birds, it decreased the reaction capacity and significantly increased the risk of colliding with any island or natural or artificial object, as in fact occurred with the power lines,” they stated in the ruling.
For this reason, the Supreme Court has ruled that the captain must assume full responsibility for his “serious recklessness” and for “far exceeding” the limits of danger permitted, thus confirming the prison sentence, suspension from public office and special disqualification for the right to passive suffrage. “We must and do condemn the accused as the responsible perpetrator of a crime against the effectiveness of the service,” highlights ruling 12/2023 of the Third Territorial Military Court.
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At the beginning of this year, in January, the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence of just three days of arrest to another pilot of F-18, in this case from the 12th Wing of the Torrejón de Ardoz air base (Madrid), for having performed a roll during a plane takeoff maneuver. The court considered on that occasion that the cash had assumed “an unnecessary risk” that justified the punishment imposed.
