NASA joins T-45 insight team

Navy instructor-pilots are back in the air, under modified conditions, with their T-45C Goshawk training jets after a 12-day stand-down tied to concerns over hypoxia-like cockpit episodes. The temporary grounding occurred after about 100 instructors from Naval Air Stations Meridian, Miss., Pensacola, Fla., and Corpus Christi, Texas, went basically on strike. Today, the T-45 pilots cannot fly above 10,000 feet; and must wear masks disconnected from the onboard oxygen generating systems while engineers assess the on-going problems. Navy officials still don’t have definitive answers as to the cause. In addition, the Navy brought in a team of more than 100 people to work on it, including breathing-system engineering experts from NASA, said Capt. Todd St. Laurent, program manager for Naval Undergraduate Flight Training Systems. Others include defense contractors, physiologists and flight surgeons to offer insights. Also, the Navy is creating a website with information about solving the issue, and where pilots can share ideas and stay abreast of potential fixes. There’s no timetable on how long the flight modifications will remain in place, according to St. Laurent, or how Navy will cope with the prospective challenge of graduating trainees to the fleet, when they haven’t been able to fly the aircraft in full operational mode. “That is right now a future event,” he said. (Source: Military.com 04/20/17) Gulf Coast Note: The T-45C is used for intermediate and advanced portions of the Navy/Marine Corps pilot training program for jet carrier aviation, tactical strike missions at Corpus and Meridian, and for Advanced Tactical Maneuvering Stage of training for Naval Flight Officers at Pensacola.