Air National Guard F-16 Crashes Near Traverse City

Ed Wilson saw the fighter with its nose up, flying extremely low, and knew it was going down.

A wingman had already been on the radio. “We have a possible mayday by wingman. I believe (they) may have taken a bird,” the military pilot told air traffic controllers, audio later posted by LiveATC.net. Controllers passed word that it appeared the jet may have lost an engine and that the pilot had ejected. They could see a lot of black smoke and believed it was the F-16.

The aircraft was an F-16 from the Texas Air National Guard’s 149th Fighter Wing, based at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. The pilot had been on a routine training mission flying out of a National Guard base in Alpena, about 190 miles north of Detroit, when the jet went down Thursday, September 17, 2026, in Grand Traverse County. Sgt. Derek Gutierrez, a public affairs specialist with the 149th, said the pilot was receiving medical treatment at a local hospital and declined to release the pilot’s identity or injury details, citing military policy. The crash remained under investigation. Gutierrez said he had not heard anything about a possible bird strike.

Nathan Smith was working at a construction site about a mile from where the jet came down. Something about the flight path struck him as odd, so he started recording. It was strange to see a jet flying that low and slow. A few seconds after his video cut, he heard a loud bang, which he later believed was the pilot ejecting.

Wendy Sobeck and her husband heard a very loud crash down the road, minutes from their rural home. “We thought there was a car accident outside our house. We saw big billowing black smoke. We couldn’t tell what it was, so my husband got into his pickup truck and saw what happened,” she said. “You could see the plane debris in the field. Explosions kept happening.” Fred Sobeck, 65, drove down and saw a big fireball in the field near a house and a camper that were not hit. Police told him to get out of there because of explosions.

Benjamin Vyverberg saw the pilot parachuting and called 911. “I just like darted over, crossed the road and into the woods and I just ran until I saw an open field. It was super easy to find. There was like this giant orange parachute in this field,” he said. “I went over to him and I was like, don’t move. He said he could wiggle his toes, so I assumed like he wasn’t paralyzed.”

Grand Traverse County Sheriff Michael D. Shea said the pilot was conscious and speaking to law enforcement at the hospital. No one else was injured in the initial crash. Shellie Doornbos and her husband were driving home from running errands when they saw the fireball. They could hear explosions coming from the fire and asked a police officer what they were hearing as they drove away; he told them it was a fighter jet crash and the explosions were ammunition.

Emergency officials first directed nearby residents to shelter in place. A short time later Michigan State Police ordered people within one mile of the site to evacuate because of a hazardous chemical spill related to the crash. Grand Traverse County Emergency Management told people to evacuate away from the intersection of Co Rd 633 and Jefferson Pl. and to follow instructions from emergency personnel. Homes and businesses inside that radius were cleared. Most residents were allowed to return home by 10 p.m. Thursday.

The hazard was hydrazine, a highly toxic fuel used in the F-16’s emergency power system. It can cause coughing, wheezing, or trouble breathing. Thirty people, including several first responders, were treated for possible exposure. The hospital used an outdoor treatment area to evaluate and decontaminate patients. Six people remained at Munson Medical Center overnight; all were in stable condition.

Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan wrote that he was aware of the plane crash near Traverse City, was closely monitoring the situation as more information came in, and was praying that the pilot and people on the ground were safe.

The F-16 Fighting Falcon is a single-engine multirole fighter that first entered service in the late 1970s and remains widely used by the U.S. Air Force, Air National Guard, and partner nations. The Air Force Safety Center has recorded at least 14 Class A mishaps involving F-16s since 2000, a category that generally covers damage above $2 million, destruction of an aircraft, or loss of life. In December, an F-16C with the Air Force Thunderbirds crashed in the Southern California desert; that pilot also ejected safely.

If a bird strike played a role, as the wingman suggested over the radio, it would not have been rare. The FAA Wildlife Strike Database recorded 41 bird strikes in Traverse City in 2025 alone. Thousands of aircraft hit birds and other animals across the United States each year.

Video of the afternoon showed a fireball in a field next to homes and a large plume of smoke rising south of Traverse City. Controllers had already told other pilots they could see the black smoke they believed was the ejected F-16.