Mississippi lawmakers are pleading with Air Force officials to keep the aging T-1A Jayhawk, a training jet that has been around for more than 30 years, in service as the Pentagon hopes to replace the aircraft with flight simulation instead.
A letter sent Monday to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall from U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, as well as U.S. Reps. Michael Guest and Trent Kelly, all Mississippi Republicans, said delays in new flight simulators and new training aircraft means the planned retirement of T-1As could cause issues for pilots.
“Once the T-1A is divested, prospective mobility pilots will spend much of their training time in simulators and less time flying prior to graduation, a posture that forces significant reliance on the timely maturation of the simulated environment,” the lawmakers wrote. “If these technologies do not mature on schedule, the Air Force will lose any ability to effectively train pilots in a ‘like-aircraft' to which they will be assigned post-graduation.”
Read Next: Air Force Under Secretary Jones, an LGBTQ Trailblazer, Is Stepping Down
The T-1A is used at Columbus Air Force Base, Miss.; Laughlin Air Force Base and Randolph Air Force Base in Texas; and Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma, according to an Air Force fact sheet. It is also used by the Navy at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida.
The Air Force was hoping to phase out many of it T-1A training aircraft this year,…
