X-31: Breaking the Chain: Lessons Learned

By any measure, the X-31 was a highly successful flight research program at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, now the Armstrong Flight Research Center. It regularly flew several flights a day, accumulating over 550 flights during the course of the program, with a superlative safety record. And yet, on Jan. 19, 1995, on the very last scheduled flight of the X-31 ship No. 1, disaster struck. Each mishap has it’s own set of circumstances and it’s own sequence of events. But those who study mishaps find similar issues: communications, complacency, unwarranted assumptions, human frailties….just like a chain. You make a chain -- a chain of events -- when you have any of these accidents. Any link of the chain, if broken, would prevent an accident. The X-31 flight test team was the “A“ team -- the best people, from every discipline -- from every organization. But they lost an airplane. If it can happen to the best team, it can happen to any team.