(CV-22) Crash Drives Air Force to Restart CV-22 Pilot Formation Training: EXCLUSIVE

http://defense.aol.com/2012/10/17/crash-drives-air-force-to-restart-cv-22-pilot-formation-training/




Crash Drives Air Force to Restart CV-22 Pilot Formation Training: EXCLUSIVE
By Richard Whittle
Published: October 17, 2012

The Air Force plans to reinstate substantial formation flight training for CV-22 Osprey pilots that it eliminated four years ago, AOL Defense has learned. Reinstatement of the training four years after the service ended it is an implicit admission, V-22 aviators said, that better training might have prevented the June 13 crash of a CV-22B in Florida.

From now on, Air Force pilots going through initial Osprey flight training with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Training Squadron 204 (VMMT-204) at Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C., will take a classroom course in formation flight, fly two formation flights of two hours each in a V-22 simulator, and fly one actual two-hour formation flight in the tiltrotor troop transport.

The decision to increase formation flight training for Air Force pilots at VMMT-204 is "an acknowledgement that our V-22 formation training was lacking," said an AFSOC member who spoke without authorization. "Obviously, in hindsight, the decision removing it is questionable at best."

Marine Corps pilots have received such formation flight training for years and regularly fly in two- and three-ship sections. The Air Force, though, whose CV-22Bs are flown solely by Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) pilots, directed VMMT-204 four years ago to exempt AFSOC students from most formation flight instruction and remove it from the syllabus for Air Force students, Air Force and Marine Corps sources said. Air Force pilots instead were given more training in using the CV-22B's inertial navigation system and terrain following/terrain avoidance radar, the sources said. The Air Force also streamlined its training at VMMT-204 to get pilots into the field more quickly, the sources said, holding each student's total flight hours at the training squadron to about 28 to 29 hours compared to 33 or more for Marine student pilots.