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12 <a href="http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette">www.mca-marines.org/gazette</a> M a r i n e C o r p s G a z e t t e • M a y 2 0 0 9 IDEAS & ISSUES (AVIATION) I n 1959 my father reported to his first fleet squadron at Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) El Toro to fly the F8U Crusader with Marine All-Weather Fighter Squadron 451 (VMF(AW)–451). When he ar- rived it was an accepted fact that when the squadron deployed overseas some- one was going to “buy the farm.” The question wasn’t if someone would be killed, but who would be killed. The Naval Aviation Class A1 flight mishap rate at that time was 26.7 per 100,000 flight hours. Just 7 years earlier it was over twice that at 54.8 per 100,000 flight hours. A naval aviator in those days could not buy a life insurance pol- icy that would cover him in the event of a flight-related death. Thirty years later, when I reported to my first fleet squadron at MCAS Beaufort in 1989 to fly the F/A–18 Hornet with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 251, the Class A flight mishap rate was down to just 2.2 per 100,000 flight hours. As evidenced in Figure 1, from the early 1950s through the late 1980s, naval aviation made phenomenal strides in reducing the mishap rate. In the four decades before I joined my first squadron the mishap rate was re- duced by over 95 percent. Numerous initiatives contributed to this reduc- tion. Some major ones include estab- lishment of the Naval Aviation Safety Center in 1953; construction of angled deck carriers, starting with the USS >Maj McGinn is a retired Marine F/A–18 pilot with over 2,500 flight hours. He now works for DCS Corporation, Lexington Park, MD, as a requirements analyst sup- porting Naval Air Systems Command, PMA209, Military Flight Operations Quality Assurance Integrated Product Team. Military Flight Assurance Big brother or big improvement? by Maj Patrick M. McGinn, USMC(Ret) Expensive platforms require diligence in keeping flight mishaps at a minimum. (Photo by LCpl Alicia R. Giron.)
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