The US military has announced it is grounding its fleet of V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft after last week's deadly crash off the coast of Japan, AFP reported.
The Air Force Special Operations Command said in a statement that the move was to "reduce risk while the investigation continues" into the Nov. 29 crash that killed eight U.S. airmen.
The Naval Air Systems Command later said it had followed suit.
The V-22 Osprey hybrid aircraft, which can take off and land vertically like a helicopter and rotate its propellers horizontally to fly like an airplane, has been involved in three fatal accidents in just over a year.
The air force's decision was made "to reduce risk while the investigation continues" into the cause of the fatal accident off southwestern Japan.
"Preliminary information from the investigation indicates that a potential material failure caused the accident, but the root cause of the failure is currently unknown," it added.
The grounding of the Ospreys will provide time and space for a thorough investigation to determine causal factors and recommendations to ensure the Air Force's CV-22 fleet returns to flight operations," the statement added.
After the incident, Japan grounded its own aircraft and asked the US military to do the same on Japanese soil as a precaution.
Several recent incidents, in addition to the one off Yakushima Island, have raised questions about the reliability of the plane, a joint project of plane maker Boeing and helicopter specialist Bell.
In late August, three US Marines died in an Osprey accident in northern Australia, and in 2022, another four died in Norway when their CV-22 crashed during a NATO training flight. /BGNES
