Pilot training goes on after 2 crashes - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Pilot training goes on after 2 crashes

Naval flight students were back flying training missions despite two major mishaps that destroyed two aircraft and killed two aviators.

The disappearance of a T-34C Turbo Mentor plane Oct. 28 over the Gulf of Mexico and the Oct. 30 crash of a TH-57 Sea Ranger helicopter near Naval Air Station Whiting Field, Fla., did not have a major effect on training operations, a Navy spokesman said.

“We still support the fleet. We have to go back to training,” said Lt. Brett Dawson, a spokesman for Naval Air Training Command.

Officials are investigating both crashes.

The search for the missing plane lasted more than a week and was complicated by the failure of the emergency transponder, which is designed to emit a signal that helps rescue teams find the aircraft, Dawson said.

Both pilots on board were flight instructors. The body of Lt. Bret Travis Miller, 30, of East Troy, Wis., was found in the water Oct. 30 about 11 miles northeast of Port Aransas, Texas. The other pilot, Lt. John Joseph Houston, 29, of Houston, remained missing as of Nov. 5, Dawson said.

Navy dive teams continued looking for the downed aircraft Nov. 5, Dawson said.

The helicopter crash in Florida destroyed the aircraft, and the student aviator was taken to the hospital, but he returned to his squadron on Nov. 2, Dawson said.

The training command suffered a spate of mishaps a couple of years ago, when student pilots crashed five T-45 Goshawk jet trainers in a nine-month period, from September 2007 through May 2008.

That string of crashes prompted the training squadrons to cut back on flight hours for several weeks, significantly slowing the training pipeline, command officials said.

In March 2008, two Marine aviators were killed when their T-34C Turbo Mentor crashed into a mountain in Alabama.

Following the recent T-34 crash, training flights were halted for several days at the squadron in Corpus Christi, Texas, but planes were back in the air Nov. 2, Dawson said.

While the training cycles were not significantly affected, the aviators in Corpus Christi were mourning the loss of the two pilots.

“This is a tragic event, and it is affecting the squadrons. Two of their squadrons’ mates disappeared, and it’s going to affect them,” Dawson said. “The Navy is a close family; this is like losing a member of your family.”