Capt. Brad Spears has an up close and personal look at an old way to solve a new problem.

Air Force pilots can't wait to get into the F-22A Raptor, the newest, fastest thing in fighter planes.

But on a recent morning, Capt. Brad Spears had to wait about five hours to get out of one that was parked at Langley Air Force Base.

He sat powerless in one of the world's most powerful planes while morning stretched into afternoon and mechanics, engineers and technicians tried to figure out why the plane's canopy was stuck shut.

It finally took four firefighters and a power saw to extract the 27th Fighter Squadron pilot from airplane No. 03-041 on April 10 while he was still on the ground.

It's costing the Air Force a $182,205 piece of polycarbonate plus the price of firefighter labor and brainpower to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Toss in a public relations problem and it gets downright expensive.

Then again, the public affairs office got some help, wanted or not.

Welcome to the Web log era.

"It wasn't that we were hiding anything," insisted Maj. Jack Miller, public affairs officer for Langley's 1st Fighter Wing. "It's just that it was no big deal."

He learned on Monday that it had become a deal as big as cyberspace.

"A friend of mine sent me a blog to ask me about it," Miller said. "Then the calls started coming." Including one from the Daily Press.

The scenario went this way:

Three Mondays ago, the canopy light was on while Spears was getting ready to launch. The "red ball" indicated that the canopy wouldn't lock, and the prescribed remedy was to turn the switch on and off, called "cycling'' by the Air Force.

Cycling worked. Sort of.

It got the canopy locked but wouldn't let it reopen. Spears was stuck inside. The mission changed from launching him to getting him out.

It was 8:15 a.m.

A call went out to maintenance people, who worked with their computers to no avail.

It became 9:15 a.m., 10:15 a.m.

Lockheed Martin technicians were called in and they did everything the manual prescribed, then a few things that weren't in the book.

Then 11:15 and 12:15. Spears was still inside, canopy locked down.

The maintenance people and factory techs ran out of ideas and patience, so the problem became less mental and more physical.

"He had been sitting three or four hours," Miller said, "and they really had to get the pilot out."

It was a job for the extraction pros, the canopy busters.

The 1st Fighter Wing fire department responded, fuel suits and oxygen tanks at the ready

after all, an airplane is a fuel tank with an engine -- a saw in hand. Tape was applied to the canopy to serve as a guide and a firefighter went to work.

The 360-pound canopy is three-quarters of an inch thick. It's designed to withstand the impact of a four-pound bird at 350 knots. But it was no match for the firefighter's saw, which carved out a man-sized hole for Spears to get out.

It was 1:15 p.m.

Work continued without Spears, the techs trying to figure out why the problem happened in the Raptor, the country's newest fighter at $344 million a copy.

This being the service, a report was prepared, and about two weeks later, it began to show up on Web logs, complete with pictures.

Then came the questions.

"This is the only time this has happened," Miller answered. "This aircraft has performed terrifically."

The real question remains.

Does the Raptor come with a warranty on the canopy? *