Always wear your Garmin!

[RizzoTheRat]

EA-18G cockpit environmental malfunction iced up the screen and instruments, and the pilot had to rely on his Garmin watch to track heading and altitude

https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2018/02/...

Scary stuff but to have both got frostbite injuries and nearly run out of emergency oxygen presumably they had to stay at that altitude for some time. If they were only 60 miles out of Seattle presumably there's a lot of commercial airspace around, but in an emergencywhy wouldn't they drop to a lower altitude where it's warmer and they don't need oxygen?

[IanH755]

Whats worse, from a safety culture point of view, is that the USN still forced crews to fly despite knowing that the Hornet, SH and Growler had so many ECS* problems that they had to issue every pilot with an untested Garmin watch as an alternative to the built in cabin pressure warning system which is extremely unreliable and didn't always tell you when there was a problem i.e. "we know the planes are broke, we don't know why and we can't fix it but we still need you to fly so, to save your life, here's a civilian watch to wear which will give you a warning when something goes wrong, because the plane won't tell you until it too late and you get Hypoxia".

Thats just an amazing safety case and I'd love to know just how high up the Officer ranks it had to go before someone would sign that off that!

*Environmental Control System - deals with altitude compensation, cockpit pressurization, oxy supply for the crew etc keeping them alive while flying above 10,000 ft as well as cooling for the avionics and other aircraft parts etc.

Edited by IanH755 on Sunday 15th April 09:02