When it comes to Super Hornets, Kindley said, the default answer to almost every breathing issue is “contamination.”
Mike FabeyThe Navy aviation community writ large is trying to get “crazy smart” about its own maintenance and testing procedures for the F-18, overcoming a sense of remote-control upkeep that has been associated with the Hornets and Super Hornets.
U.S. Navy F/A-18 operators have enough of the hypoxia and other breathing-related problems that have seemingly plagued the aircraft over the past couple of years.
One squadron, for example, has come up with a rather simple solution for a jet that gives its pilots such grief,
“They put them on probation,” Capt. David Kindley, program manager for the Navy’s mainstay aircraft, told Scout Warrior in an interview. “They put it in jail.”
And to get out of jet jail, the aircraft must go through a pretty rigorous round of testing and vetting. “They are taking ownership of their own (hypoxia-related) issues),” Kindley says. “They are getting pretty smart on maintenance – crazy smart.”