Two contractors died in separate aviation-related accidents this week while on the job at Fort Novosel , Alabama, and Fort Belvoir , Virginia, Army spokespeople confirmed to Military.com on Thursday.
An Army contractor died Wednesday afternoon when the AH-64 Apache helicopter he was teaching a student to fly crashed at Fort Novosel, the base said in a press release.
The Apache crashed during "routine flight training" around 1:40 p.m. local time, killing the instructor pilot and injuring his student.
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Dale County Coroner John Cawley identified the deceased instructor as Daniel Munger, 46, of Enterprise, Alabama. He was medically evaluated at the crash site and later pronounced dead, the Army said.
Munger was an Army veteran who retired at the rank of chief warrant officer three, Enterprise Mayor William Cooper said on Facebook on Thursday. He "served his country and upon retirement chose to continue to share his passion with future Army aviators," Cooper wrote.
A public LinkedIn profile that appeared to belong to Munger listed him as departing the Army after nearly three decades as an infantryman and helicopter pilot. He joined the U.S. branch of Canada-based military training contractor CAE in 2022 as an Apache instructor pilot, according to the profile.
CAE spokesperson Wendy Stough confirmed Munger's employment in an email to Military.com on Thursday.
The unnamed student pilot sustained minor injuries in the accident and was airlifted for further medical evaluation following the accident, Fort Novosel said in the release. Base spokesperson Brittany Trumbull said further details on the student's condition are not yet available.
"Our primary concern is the welfare and health of the student pilot and care and concern for the family of the deceased," Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, commanding general of Fort Novosel and the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence, said in the release.
As the Army's aviation headquarters, Fort Novosel is the service's primary flight training site and graduates more than 1,000 new aviators each year.
Trumbull did not answer by press time whether the base had paused training in the aftermath of the accident.
It's unclear to what extent the Apache, an attack helicopter that can wield a 30mm chain gun as well as air-to-ground and air-to-air munitions, was damaged. The Army has launched an investigation into the accident.
Details are also emerging about a separate incident Tuesday in which an unnamed contractor was killed while performing maintenance on a fixed-wing aircraft at Fort Belvoir's Davison Army Airfield, a spokesperson for the Army Military District of Washington said Thursday.
The aircraft belonged to the Army Aviation Brigade, which flies senior Army leaders and other Pentagon officials around the globe.
No one else was involved in the incident, and the airfield is undamaged, Army spokesperson Bernhard Lashleyleidner said in an email. Lashleyleidner referred further questions to Amentum, the contractor's employer.
"We send our deepest profound condolences to the family, friends and teammates of our departed colleague," Amentum spokesperson Chanel Mann said in an email. "Our valued employees work each day on the critical mission to secure our national defense, and our thoughts and prayers go out to our team member's family."
This week's deaths bring the total number of fatalities connected to Army aviation to at least seven so far in calendar 2024. Wednesday's crash is the latest in a string of Army aircraft mishaps that has killed at least 13 people and injured several more since October.
Many of those accidents have involved Apaches, including a crash that injured two pilots at Fort Riley , Kansas, in May; another at Fort Carson , Colorado, that left two soldiers hospitalized in March two days after an Apache went down during training at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, injuring two soldiers; and a National Guard Apache crash near Salt Lake City , Utah, that also injured the pilots in February.
On Feb. 23, two Army National Guardsmen died in an Apache crash during a training flight in northern Mississippi. And on March 8, two New York Guardsmen and a border patrol agent died when their UH-72 Lakota light utility helicopter crashed while supporting the federal border security mission in southern Texas.
The Army in April responded by ordering helicopter pilots to log more training hours focused on boosting spatial awareness and combating maintenance issues. The uptick in training followed multiple temporary pauses in flight operations -- including one in April 2023 that grounded aircraft across the force -- while officials sought a solution to the deadly problem.
The Army said it had logged nine Class A aviation mishaps in fiscal 2024, or those in which someone is killed or damages total upward of $2.5 million, as of March 13 -- six more than the number of "similar mishaps during the same time last year."
That total will rise when adding this week's deaths, pending completion of the new investigations.
Related: Army Orders More Helicopter Pilot Training After Spate of 12 Crashes Kills, Injures Soldiers
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