Japan will resume V-22 flights after inquiry finds pilot error caused incident last month

TOKYO (AP) — Japan's fleet of hybrid-helicopter military aircraft have been cleared to resume operations after being grounded following an incident last month.

A V-22 Osprey tilted and hit the ground as it was taking off during a joint exercise with the U.S. military on Oct. 27. An investigation has found human error was the cause.

The aircraft was carrying 16 people when it “became unstable” on takeoff from a Japanese military base on Yonaguni, a remote island southwest of Okinawa. The flight was aborted and nobody was injured, Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, or JGSDF, said at the time.

In a statement on Thursday, the JGSDF said that the pilots had failed to turn on a switch designed to temporarily increase engine output during takeoff, causing the aircraft to descend and sway uncontrollably.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said that an internal investigation determined that the incident was caused by a human error, not by “physical or external factors.”

He said that the fleet of more than a dozen V-22s would resume flight operations from Thursday after a review of safety and training measures.

It was the first major incident involving Japan's V-22s since November 2023, when a U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command Osprey crashed off Japan's southern coast, killing eight people.

The fleet only resumed flight operations earlier this year, but the use of the V-22 remains controversial, particularly in Okinawa where residents have questioned its safety record. The small southern island is home to half of about 50,000 U.S. troops based in Japan.