More than 100 Navy instructor pilots, including those from naval air stations Pensacola, Fla.; Meridian, Miss.; and Kingsville, Texas, were refusing to fly T-45 Goshawk training jets in protest of the service’s leadership to adequately address an urgent problem with the planes’ oxygen system. Over the past five years, disorientation and physiological episodes were in part caused by problems with the oxygen system. It had nearly quadrupled with the T-45, according to congressional testimony by senior naval aviators. The Navy’s top naval aviator told Fox News that the T-45 issue is the Navy’s No. 1 safety priority, but that there was no smoking gun” as to the cause.
UPDATE: Navy officials announced April 5 that Naval Air Forces has directed a three-day "safety pause" for the T-45 aviation community.
However, the Navy is considering grounding, according to multiple pilots, the entire fleet. The boycott has unofficially and effectively grounded hundreds of training flights. “Pilots don’t feel safe flying this aircraft,” according to one instructor. Last week, a student-pilot at Training Squadron (VT) 86 in Pensacola had to be “dragged out” of the jet because he became “incapacitated” from a faulty oxygen system, according to instructors. Anticipating pilot protests, the Navy sent a team of civilian engineers and specialists to T-45 training bases in Kingsville, Meridian, and Pensacola for discussions with pilots. In Meridian, the meeting “got heated” over documented information not reaching experts at the Naval Air Systems Command, Fox reported. Six months ago, the Navy sent Sorbent tubes to all its jet squadrons to measure the air pilots were breathing. After each flight, the tubes were sent to a lab in Maryland for analysis. After 1,500 flights worth of air samples, the results were inconclusive. Among the student-pilots affected by the safety concerns and training is Marine 1st Lt. Michael Pence, son of Vice President Mike Pence. (Source: Fox News 04/04/17)
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