Navy Clear on Causes of Physiological Events in Pilots; Final Recommendations Released for PE...

The Navy now understands what has been causing physiological events in aviators – which spiked so sharply in 2017 that flight instructors refused to get into their jets to train new student pilots – with a recently completed root cause analysis pointing to a complex relationship between aircrew, their flight gear and their aircraft.
Rear Adm. Fredrick Luchtman, the commander of the Naval Safety Center and the lead of the Physiological Episodes Action Team (PEAT), told reporters today that two root cause corrective action (RCCA) teams – one looking at the T-45 Goshawk trainer jet and one looking at the F-18 family of fighters – had completed their work in December and briefed naval aviation leaders in February on their findings. The teams spent three years and $50 million on this work, drafting more than 8,000 pages of technical documentation and proposing combined 567 recommendations for how to keep pilots and weapons officers safer in the cockpit in the future.