Boeing, US Navy Celebrate T‑45 Jet Trainer’s Million-Flight-Hour Milestone

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny [NYSE: BA] today joined the U.S. Navy at Cecil Field in Jack­sonville to cel­e­brate the Naval Air Train­ing Command’s 1 mil­lionth flight hour with the T‑45 Goshawk, the Navy’s pre­mier jet train­er air­craft.

Source: Boe­ing Click to enlarge

“This mile­stone is anoth­er tes­ta­ment to the qual­i­ty that this team has put into each and every T‑45 that we have train­ing our future aer­i­al com­bat war­riors,” said Rear Adm. Bill Size­more, chief of Naval Air Train­ing. “It’s an excit­ing time in Naval Air Train­ing as we forge into the future with the T‑45 Goshawk, con­vert­ing the remain­ing ana­log mod­els into digital/glass cock­pits to mir­ror the air­craft in the fleet.” 

For more than 18 years, the twin-seat, sin­gle-engine Goshawk has pre­pared stu­dent avi­a­tors to tran­si­tion to front-line Navy and Marine Corps fleet air­craft, includ­ing the F/A‑18 Hor­net, F/A‑18E/F Super Hor­net, EA‑6 Prowler, EA-18G Growler and AV-8B Har­ri­er. It is also the only air­craft in the world designed to con­duct car­ri­er-based flight train­ing. A total of three Naval Air Train­ing Com­mand wings fly the T‑45; Boe­ing pre­sent­ed each with a plaque at today’s event. 

“Boe­ing is hon­ored to com­mem­o­rate the T‑45’s rich lega­cy with our U.S. Navy cus­tomer, and we share the Navy’s pride in the aircraft’s crit­i­cal mis­sion of train­ing for naval avi­a­tion,” said Greg Dunn, T‑45 pro­gram man­ag­er at Boe­ing. “Boe­ing was proud to deliv­er the final T‑45 air­craft last year. Our sup­port of the T‑45 fleet con­tin­ues with afford­able upgrades and sup­ply-chain solu­tions. The Boe­ing team under­stands the impor­tance of max­i­miz­ing readi­ness and safe­ty for the Navy so that aspir­ing avi­a­tors and flight offi­cers are able to climb into a T‑45 and take to the sky to earn those cher­ished wings of gold.” 

The Goshawk is a com­po­nent of the ful­ly inte­grat­ed T‑45 train­ing sys­tem, which also includes high-fideli­ty instru­ment and flight sim­u­la­tors, com­put­er-assist­ed class­room learn­ing, an auto­mat­ed train­ing-man­age­ment asset, and con­trac­tor logis­tics sup­port. More than 3,600 stu­dent avi­a­tors from the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al mil­i­taries have received instruc­tion on the sys­tem at naval air sta­tions in Merid­i­an, Miss.; Kingsville, Texas; and Pen­saco­la, Fla., before earn­ing their “wings of gold” naval avi­a­tor insignia. 

“BAE Sys­tems is proud of its role on the T‑45 pro­gram, and of the train­ing air­craft capa­bil­i­ty that we have brought to bear in sup­port of our part­ner­ship with Boe­ing,” said Mar­tin Rush­ton, man­ag­ing direc­tor for BAE Sys­tems’ Air Sec­tor Train­ing Busi­ness. “The T‑45 Goshawk plays a key part in the over­all train­ing sys­tem for the U.S. Navy, and it is great to see that the air­craft con­tin­ues to per­form so well.” 

Boe­ing deliv­ered the 221st and final T‑45 train­ing jet to the Navy in Novem­ber 2009. The com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to sup­port the T‑45 fleet by pro­vid­ing engi­neer­ing, logis­tics, and sup­port equip­ment in part­ner­ship with BAE Sys­tems, which sup­plied the aircraft’s rear and cen­ter fuse­lage sec­tions, wing assem­bly and ver­ti­cal tail. Boe­ing man­ages the T‑45’s spare and repair parts sup­ply, and sup­ports L‑3 Ver­tex with air­craft main­te­nance. Rolls-Royce pro­vid­ed the T‑45’s Adour F405 tur­bo­fan pow­er plant. 

A unit of The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny, Boe­ing Defense, Space & Secu­ri­ty is one of the world’s largest defense, space and secu­ri­ty busi­ness­es spe­cial­iz­ing in inno­v­a­tive and capa­bil­i­ties-dri­ven cus­tomer solu­tions, and the world’s largest and most ver­sa­tile man­u­fac­tur­er of mil­i­tary air­craft. Head­quar­tered in St. Louis, Boe­ing Defense, Space & Secu­ri­ty is a $34 bil­lion busi­ness with 68,000 employ­ees worldwide. 

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Contact: 

Juli­ette Yancey
Boe­ing Glob­al Ser­vices & Sup­port
Office: 314–777-7863
Mobile: 314–691-8973
juliette.d.yancey@boeing.com

Scott Day
Boe­ing Glob­al Ser­vices & Sup­port
Office: 703–872-4206
Mobile: 703–403-3083
scott.day2@boeing.com

Source:
Boe­ing Glob­al Ser­vices & Support 

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