Air Force faults crew in second tanker accident that tore off boom
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Air Force faults crew in second tanker accident that tore off boom
A 2025 accident was the fourth time since 2022 that a design flaw known as "nozzle binding" in the Air Force's newest, high tech tanker played a role in a refueling accident.
By Matt White
Published
Jun 16, 2026 11:22 AM EDT
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An Air Force accident report blamed a crew member for an July 2025 midflight accident. The mishap was the second time in 11 months that a KC-46 boom, which is known to stick during refueling, broke off midflight.
Air Force photo by Senior Airman Robert Nichols.
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A midair collision last year that ripped the refueling boom off of one of the Air Force’s newest tanker aircraft, sending the multi-million-dollar fueling arm tumbling into the Atlantic Ocean, came moments after the tanker’s probe became stuck in a fighter jet’s fuel port.
The 2025 accident was the second time in 11 months that a KC-46A Pegasus’ refueling boom was ripped off the plane and fell to earth after becoming stuck in a trailing jet during refueling. In all, stuck KC-46A probes have now led to four midair mishaps since 2022.
A report released last week on the July 2025 accident laid the blame for the mishap primarily on a boom operator applying too much force to the controls as a student fighter pilot made a shaky approach to the tanker. The “boom” is a roughly 50-foot-long tube that extends from the back of the tanker to the fuel port of another aircraft. During refueling, the boom’s operator “flies” the boom through a system of cables and wings with a control stick.
“The cause of the mishap was the mishap boom operator’s manual control inputs to the air refueling flight control stick,” investigators found. Those inputs, the report said, caused the boom to become stuck in the fuel port of an F-22 during refueling and caused an “unrecoverable boom fly-up rate upon release from the receptacle.” In layman’s terms, the boom slammed into the bottom of the tanker, then ripped free from the plane.
But the report also echoed findings in three previous KC-46 accidents, all of which were traced to a well-known flaw that can cause the boom to become stuck during refueling, known as “nozzle binding.” That flaw, the new report said, was a known “category 1 discrepancy,” a level of defect the Air Force says “may cause death, severe injury, or […] loss or major damage to weapon system.” The design of the jet’s refueling probe is “too stiff while in contact with a receiver aircraft.”
A C-17 pilot conducts aerial refueling with a KC-46 Pegasus. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Elizabeth Nash.
The flaw was “applicable” in the 2025 accident, board president Col. Kevin White wrote, but was not the primary cause.
Besides the 2025 and 2024 accidents that both ripped a KC-46’s boom off, two near-miss accidents in 2022 also saw KC-46A fuel probes become lodged in a fighter jet’s fuel port before breaking free. In one of those, the boom slammed dangerously into the tanker’s tail butstayed attached to the tanker.
The 2025 accident, the report said, caused $9,979,567 in damage. The three accidents in 2024 and 2022 caused a combined $22 million.
Boom torn off after ‘unrecoverable fly-up’
The July 2025 mishap, the report found, came during a training flight, in which the McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas-based tanker crew was refueling F-22s based at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia.
The boom operator, the report said, was an instructor with 1,012 total flight hours on Air Force tankers, including two years on the KC-135 before switching to KC-46 duty in 2021.
The operator, the report said, put too much force into their control of the boom, causing “a radial force to be applied to the [fuel] nozzle and the nozzle to then become bound inside the receiver’s air refueling receptacle. This subsequently produced an unrecoverable boom fly-up rate upon release from the receptacle, striking [the KC-46] and causing a critical failure of the boom structure.”
Photos of damage to the refueling boom of a KC-46A tanker after a 2025 refueling accident that ripped most of the fuel probe off the plane over the Atlantic Ocean. Photos from USAF accident investigation report.
Along with the boom operator, the report put some blame on the F-22...