EDITORIALS

Inappropriate decision?

And other forays into understatement

— DID YOU happen to catch those fly-boys (and fly-girls) at the Little Rock Air Force Base a couple of weekends ago? That is, above the base. Air shows rock. Literally. When some of those fast-movers go over, the car shakes. Even if you didn’t make the air show this year, you know what it’s like hearing a jet tear through the air. A few years back, just before a game at War Memorial, a jet went over the crowd at the end of the national anthem-then over downtown Little Rock-and those of us unlucky enough to still be at work went diving under desks.

It takes a special breed to pilot those things.

You’d think the military would take better care of them.

Reports in the news over the last few weeks-notably by ABC News and in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram-show that the Air Force hasn’t exactly been moving at Mach 5 to fix some sort of oxygen problem in the F-22 Raptor jets. Pilots have been having breathing problems during and after flying the things, which has become public knowledge in recent months. But according to dispatches, the Air Force has known about the problem since 2000.

You’d think an “oxygen problem” would set off some loud alarms. Pilots, like the rest of us, sorta need oxygen.

A retired general, Gregory Martin, was called back to duty to head one of those Official Task Forces to look into the problem. (Thank you, General.) He told a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this month that there had been a back-up oxygen system in the original design for the F-22, but it had been cut to lighten the plane.

“In retrospect, that was not an appropriate decision,” General Martin said. “But at the time, that’s what the decision was.”

Yes, it wasn’t an appropriate decision. The general had that right. And how.

The family of Captain Jeff Haney knows how inappropriate the decision was. Back in November of 2010, a decade after the problem was discovered, Captain Haney’s primary oxygen system shut down-for some unexplained reason-after a routine training mission over Alaska.

He never made any SOS calls, he never ejected. His plane hit the ground going faster than the speed of sound.

What exactly went wrong is anybody’s guess. Immediately after the crash, the Air Force blamed the accident on pilot error, saying the captain didn’t turn on the back-up oxygen system-a system that involves pulling a ring tucked away in a corner of the cockpit. Even the Air Force says finding and pulling the ring isn’t easy-even when a pilot isn’t struggling to breathe.

ABC News uncovered internal documents showing that military and civilian test groups had warned that the plane needed another back-up oxygen system. And that those warnings had been issued a decade before Captain Haney crashed. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that the Air Force may have nixed the idea because of concerns about its costs.

For those of us who like watching, hearing and even feeling the U.S. military flying overhead-it’s the sound of Freedom!-talk of saving money while not saving pilots’ lives seems like a case of misplaced priorities. Upside-down priorities.

On behalf of those of us who have friends or family in those cockpits, and those of us who just don’t like the idea of having F-22 jets falling out of the sky where we might be standing, there’s something we have to get off our collective chest:

Fix.

This.

Now.

We doubt you’d get much argument from those who have to fly the things.

Editorial, Pages 10 on 09/24/2012

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