Remnants of an Italian military jet are being recovered from a remote area south of Darwin after a pilot had a narrow escape during a major military training exercise.
RAAF Air Commodore Pete Robinson said preliminary investigations showed there was an “issue” with the Eurofighter 2000 Typhoon and Wednesday's crash during the biennial Exercise Pitch Black event did not involve another plane.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with the wider Pitch Black construct or another aircraft involved in the exercise,” he told reporters in Darwin on Thursday.
Participants from all 20 countries taking part, including those from Italy who were participating in the exercises for the first time in their 43-year history, resumed flying on Thursday after planes were grounded for nearly 24 hours.
The pilot was released from Royal Darwin Hospital after precautionary scans confirmed he had sustained no injuries, despite ejecting from a plane at "hundreds of miles per hour", Cdre Robinson said.
The pilot slowed the plane before ejecting over an area of pastoral land 220km south of Darwin.
“Suddenly our foreign pilots, after the brief we had given them about snakes, crocodiles and buffaloes, had some time thinking in the parachute on the way down,” Cdre Robinson said.
“But he has actually hit the ground in good condition and our ability to recover him quickly has got him back into hospital.”
The pilot steered the plane away from any built-up areas before it plummeted into pastoral land, causing a small fire 12km south of the remote community of Nauiyu.
Northern Territory Police and the Australian Defence Force are working to secure the crash site, while Italian and Australian military delegates investigate the cause of the incident.
In September 2017 an Italian pilot was killed during an airshow in Rome after the same type of Italian fighter jet involved in Wednesday's crash failed to regain altitude during a flying manoeuvre.
Pitch Black goes until next Friday.
