Navy flight training will resume in July when T-45 Goshawk trainers receive fixes to their troubled air supply, the three-star Commander, Naval Air Forces said this week. The aircraft had been flying only limited flights at low altitude for fear an oxygen-deprived pilot would become disoriented and crash. Now, instructors will start flying again in […]
WASHINGTON: A glitchy software upgrade to the ALIS ground support system has grounded the Marine Corps F-35B squadron based in Yuma, Arizona, the F-35 Joint Program Office announced. Details are sparse, but a Marine Corps statement (reproduced in full below) said the unspecified “anomalies” only affected maintenance codes and only in the Yuma squadron, VMFA-211. […]
PARIS: Boeing Defense’s new CEO, Leanne Caret, told me this afternoon that investigating suspected hypoxia cases is “a top priority for Boeing,” and she is receiving weekly briefings on the issue. Pilots are supposed to be tough physical specimens who can handle 9 Gs and still think fast. But flying at altitude — often in […]
WASHINGTON: The Navy hasn’t been able to process 25 prospective pilots for each of the last three months as it struggles to find the cause of what may be hypoxia episodes afflicting many T-45 pilots. The service has not been able to ferret out what is causing them to suffer from headaches and other symptoms. Vice Adm. Paul Grosklags, the […]
WASHINGTON: The two Air Force F-35As scheduled to cross the Atlantic Ocean and fly at the Paris Air Show are still scheduled to go after Luke Air Force Base declared a one-day stand-down to brief pilots on five apparent hypoxia incidents afflicting pilots there since May 2. “The F-35 Joint Program Office, along with the U.S. […]
Days after the Navy’s T-45 Goshawk trainers returned to flight under strict safety restrictions because of problems with their air supply, the service felt compelled to make them even stricter. An aircrew’s report of “minor headaches” prompted the tighter limits, a Navy spokesperson told Breaking Defense. Only one flight out of 92 over 48 hours reported such […]
CAPITOL HILL: It turns out Navy pilots like to breathe. That’s a potential problem in the Navy’s mainstay fighter, the F-18 Hornet, which is suffering failures of its On-Board Oxygen Generation System (OBOGS). While rare, a single case of in-flight oxygen deprivation could potentially kill the pilot, destroy a $30 million to $60 million aircraft, or […]