Army Grounds New Helicopters Pending Probe of Fatal Crash

The Army on Wednesday grounded its fleet of AH-64 Apache helicopter gunships, describing the action as a precautionary one in light of a fatal crash last week.

The service said that the directive applied to all 264 of the new-model gunships now in the inventory and would remain in effect until an investigation of the crash, on Aug. 21 at Ft. Rucker, Ala., was completed.

An instructor pilot was killed and a student pilot was seriously injured in that crash.

“This action is a precautionary measure taken as the result of the crash of an Apache for what appears to be a mechanical failure in the tail rotor swash plate assembly,” the Army said in a statement.

The statement said the Army was still investigating the cause of the failure. After the investigation is completed, the Army said, it will issue instructions on what is needed to bring the AH-64 back into service.

The Aug. 21 crash was the third major accident involving the AH-64 during the current fiscal year, but it was the first to result in a fatality. The other accidents, also at Ft. Rucker, occurred on Aug. 10 and July 9.

Earlier this summer, the Army temporarily grounded all the Apaches for modifications to an engine wiring harness. Those modifications took only about four hours for each helicopter, and the fleet was quickly returned to service.

The Apache is replacing the Cobra helicopter gunship as the Army’s primary attack helicopter. It is built by McDonnell Douglas Helicopters, formerly Hughes Helicopters, and costs about $11.5 million. The Army plans to buy 573 of the aircraft.