and joining us now to shine some light on what it's like to fly an f-18 is military reporter leah sutton. >> she lives in san diego. thank you so much for joining us, leah. >> thank you for having me. >> we know you have a lot of experience with these jets and they are used and are very highly successful in combat. we are hearing from officials that a catastrophic mechanical malfunction is the reason for this crash. can you explain to us what that possibly means as far as what went wrong? >> well, angie, there's a number of things that could have gone wrong for an airplane, for an f-18 to crash on takeoff. it's a very vulnerable phase of flight because you are low and slow and trying to get away from the ground. certain catastrophic failures could have occurred. for example, complete hydraulics failure or a dual engine failure, even electrical failure would make it unflyable to the point where the pilots really couldn't do anything at some point and would just have to eject. >> and, leah, i'm curious to know what it's like that moment when you realize you have to eject. you have to ditch