F-35 jet pilot had a 50-minute conference call mid-flight before parachuting to safety

An F-35 jet pilot in Alaska spent nearly an hour on the phone with Lockheed Martin engineers before ejecting from his fighter and watching it plunge to the ground.

The F-35 jet crash at Eielson Air Force Base ended in a massive fireball, destroying the high-tech aircraft.

The pilot survived with only minor injuries.

A new report reveals how a mix of bad luck, freezing weather, and questionable decisions led to the loss.

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The conference call didn’t help the F-35 jet stay in the air

The trouble began when the landing gear jammed shortly after takeoff.

Standard checklists didn’t fix it, so the pilot dialed into a conference call with five Lockheed engineers.

If you’re wondering how a pilot even enters a conference call in the air, it’s likely these customized $400,000 F-35 helmets came in handy.

For 50 minutes, they brainstormed ways to get the jet safely back on the runway while the aircraft circled the base.

At their suggestion, the pilot tried a couple of ‘touch-and-go’ landings to straighten the nose wheel.

Instead of solving the issue, the moves made things worse.

The jet’s systems became confused, thought it was already on the ground, and the fighter went haywire.

With the aircraft no longer responding, the pilot had to eject, which isn’t nearly as safe as many people believe.

Seconds later, the jet slammed into the ground and exploded.

The Air Force blamed poor decision-making

Investigators say the cold Alaskan weather at Eielson Air Force Base played a big role in the F-35 jet crash.

Ice in the hydraulic system jammed the landing gear, sparking the chain of problems.

But they also pointed to human error, noting that earlier warnings about cold-weather risks had been issued months before the crash.

The Air Force concluded that poor decision-making, both in the cockpit and on the call, added to the disaster.

Had the team pushed for an immediate landing or controlled ejection, the outcome might have been different.

Instead, the high-tech fighter, which costs an eye-popping amount of money, was lost in spectacular fashion.

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