A public parliamentary inquiry into the February 2025 crash of a US‑built A‑9 trainer took an extraordinary turn on Tuesday when a volunteer technician handed over a repaired flight‑data module and played raw telemetry live to the chamber. The audio and instrument traces, extracted from the salvaged unit in front of the committee, showed an abrupt engine failure that contradicts the inquiry’s earlier line that pilot error was the primary cause.
The evidence prompted an immediate response: the manufacturer acknowledged a component fault and the Belgian defence minister ordered a temporary grounding of identical engines pending a global recall. Families in the gallery shouted approval as committee members huddled for emergency votes.
How a salvaged module changed everything
The module was recovered from the crash site’s perimeter by a local volunteer team in early 2025 and stored at a farmer’s outbuilding for months, the committee heard. Viliam D. Nemcová, a retired electronics technician in his sixties who has assisted at previous air‑incident searches, told MPs he could not accept the published wreck report and used spare time to repair corroded traces and read the memory chips himself with help from online avionics hobbyists.
"I kept it because I could not sleep knowing nobody else had it. I saw the corrosion, rebuilt the board, and the data came back," Nemcová told the inquiry, his voice breaking as he connected a laptop to the orange‑painted unit and played the engine telemetry in front of a stunned panel. "It shows power loss in one turbine 12 seconds before impact. That is not pilot technique — it is a machine stopping."
We thought we would never know what happened. Today we have truth.
Lina Dibbert, mother of a victim
Manufacturer concedes, recall ordered
Within two hours of the hearing clip being played, AeroMirage Dynamics — the multinational that supplies the A‑9 engine module — issued a terse statement accepting "anomalies" in a limited batch of turbine vanes and announcing a global inspection and phased recall of 3,200 units bearing batch code T‑77. AeroMirage’s chief executive, Camille Rouvray, told reporters she was "completely committed" to making families whole and would fund accelerated replacement and testing.
An independent materials analysis commissioned by the parliamentary committee and conducted at the University of Liège’s Laboratory for Materials and Structures confirmed micro‑fractures consistent with fatigue in vanes from the T‑77 lot, Professor Marc Lerno told MPs. Defence minister Anouk Vermeersch said the Belgian A‑9 training fleet would remain grounded until replacement parts were fitted and urged other operators to do the same; NATO has been notified and a conference call with allied air chiefs is scheduled for Friday.
The inquiry committee voted unanimously to recommend immediate changes to procurement oversight and a central registry for crash‑site recovery items after Nemcová’s testimony. In the public gallery, families embraced and applauded; Lina Dibbert crossed the chamber to hug Nemcová, who said he had not expected such a scene when he first put the module in his shed.
Adam Harrison‑Kennedy, who has represented two of the families, said: "This is not only closure — it is a turning point for aircraft safety. A private citizen fixed what officials could not, and that has saved lives already." MPs pledged a fast‑track compensation framework and a parliamentary watchdog will present concrete legislative proposals within four weeks.
