On August 18, 2026, the left main landing gear of a Japan Air Self-Defense Force F-15 fighter jet collapsed as the aircraft touched down at Naha Airport in Okinawa. The failure forced the closure of one of the airport’s two runways for about four hours. The pilot escaped without injury.
What Happened on the Runway
The single-seat F-15J belonged to the 304th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Naha Air Base and was returning from a Quick Reaction Alert scramble when its left main gear gave way on touchdown, The Aviationist reported.
The jet tilted onto its left wingtip and external fuel tank, slid down the runway, and spun a full 180 degrees before stopping, facing back the way it came.
Naha Airport is a dual-use facility whose runways serve both JASDF fighters and the civilian flights that connect Okinawa’s islands to the rest of Japan. When one runway closes, the other has to absorb all the traffic that would normally split between the two.
How Many Flights Were Delayed Depends on Who You Ask
Accounts of the disruption differ. News On Japan reported that arriving flights faced delays of up to one hour and ten minutes by mid-afternoon, while Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki put the toll at roughly 40 passenger flights delayed as much as 35 minutes.
A separate report from Caliber.az cited authorities saying the closure did not affect the civilian schedule at all.
Japan’s Ministry of Defense had not released an official account of the failure, or its cause, at the time of this report. Tamaki called the incident “gravely disappointing” and urged a prompt investigation into what went wrong.
Still unconfirmed
No official cause has been released, and secondary reports disagree on how many flights were actually delayed. Treat the flight-impact figures as provisional until JASDF or Japan’s transport ministry publish their own numbers.
Why Naha’s F-15s Carry So Much Weight
Naha Air Base hosts two of the JASDF’s busiest fighter squadrons, tasked with intercepting aircraft approaching Japan’s southwestern airspace near Taiwan and the East China Sea.
In the fiscal year through March 2025, Naha’s squadrons, including the 304th, handled about 58% of Japan’s roughly 700 fighter scrambles nationwide, the large majority against Chinese military aircraft, according to a Breaking Defense analysis of JASDF data.
One base, most of the workload
Naha’s two F-15 squadrons alone scrambled more than 400 times in a single year, more than every other JASDF fighter base combined.
The F-15J is a license-built version of the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle, one of the world’s fastest fighter jets since it entered service in the early 1980s. Many of Japan’s F-15Js are now approaching 40 years old.
They are roughly the same generation as the F-15E Strike Eagles the US Air Force is moving to base at Whiteman Air Force Base, even as the newer F-15EX begins replacing older jets in US service.
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