An aircraft maintenance contractor was found not liable in the 2014 death of a civilian Department of Defense pilot who crashed in the Gulf during a flight out of Tyndall Air Force Base. 58-year-old Matthew LaCourse, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, was working as a civilian F-16 jet pilot with the 82nd Aerial Targets Squadron. An Air Force investigation found that LaCourse did not have the proper training to begin flying the F-16 jets again after not flying them for nearly 20-years. More specifically, the report found that LaCourse had not been required to attend F-16 centrifuge retraining. LaCourse’s widow had filed a lawsuit blaming the crash on problems with the F-16’s dual-hydraulic system.
