All T-45C training jet flights are grounded after more than 100 Navy pilots went on strike because of a problem with the planes’ oxygen systems.
All flights with the aircraft were put to a stop for three days while the problems are addressed, the Navy announced Wednesday.
The announcement came a day after Fox reported that pilots began boycotting flights last week and grounded hundreds of flights because they didn’t feel safe flying the plane. Vice President Mike Pence’s son, Marine 1st Lt. Michael Pence, was among the pilots.
According to the Tuesday report, problems with the oxygen system had been causing physiological episodes in pilots at higher rates, including “histotoxic hypoxia.” That is a medical term for a disorder that causes disorientation in pilots that can put them at risk during flights.
According to Fox, a student training on the plane had to be dragged out of the jet because he was incapacitated by the oxygen system. There were 10 similar incidents in the T-45 just last month.
The T-45 Goshawk is used to train Navy and Marine Corps pilots and can land on aircraft carriers.
“This issue is my number one safety priority and our team of NAVAIR program managers, engineers and maintenance experts in conjunction with Type Commanders, medical and physiological experts continue to be immersed in this effort working with a sense of urgency to determine all the root causes of PEs along multiple lines of effort,” said Vice Adm. Mike Shoemaker, commander of Naval Air Forces, said in a statement.
Speaking to reporters, House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry said he had just spoken the Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson about the issue, but he had not yet heard of the grounding.
“They are 30-year-old airplanes, if you look at all of the statistics the older airplanes have more trouble with this, so I have no doubt they are putting all the resources to identify and fix the problem,” Thornberry said. “But as we’ve gotten testimony before, an F/A-18A takes twice as much maintenance as an F-18 E/F.”
During that hearing, before news came out of the grounding, Richardson said fixing the problem is a top priority for aviation leaders.
“It is a vexing problem and this is not a resource-constrained thing, this is an area where we are applying the resources we need,” he said. “Cost is not an issue as we approach this problem.”
Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., said the problem sounds like “a leadership issue” that will affect readiness, flying hours and morale.
Richardson said communication was a part of the problem.
“When we heard about the concerns of our instructor pilots in our training wings, we sent a team down there to make sure that we fully understood their concerns and they fully understood what we were doing,” he said. “I think what we had more than anything else was a breakdown in communication. And those teams are on-site now working through each of the training wings, they are resolving the differences in perspective and the differences in communication.”
