Navy and Marine V-22 Osprey’s have returned to flight with further restrictions over a mechanical element of the tilt-rotor plane, Naval Air Methods Command introduced on Friday.
“NAVAIR issued a fleet bulletin directing the inspection of V-22 Osprey to confirm the flight hours on every Proprotor Gearbox previous to an plane’s subsequent flight,” reads the Friday assertion.
“Plane with PRGBs that at present meets or exceeds a predetermined flight-hour threshold will resume flights in accordance with controls instituted within the March 2024 interim flight clearance.”
The failure of the PRGB was discovered by the Air Drive as the first reason for the Nov. 23, 2023, crash of an Air Drive Particular Operations Command, based on the investigation.
“The metallurgical weak spot inside the V-22 transmission is believed to present itself comparatively early within the element’s lifespan, that means PRGBs with flight hours above the edge have been deemed secure,” reads a Friday report from Flight World.
The Navy had grounded its fleet of CMV-22B Ospreys that function the provider onboard supply plane from Dec. 9 to Dec. 14, a Navy official instructed USNI Information on Friday. The “operational pause” adopted an incident with an Air Drive MV-22B over New Mexico associated to the gearbox subject.
“The U.S. Navy has resumed flight operations of the CMV-22B Osprey in accordance with NAVAIR fleet bulletin and interim flight clearance for the V-22 Osprey program,” reads an announcement from commander, Naval Air Forces.
“The Navy has confidence within the evaluation by NAVAIR because the Airworthiness Certification Authority for the V-22 program, and Commander, Naval Air Forces will stay in shut collaboration with key senior leaders throughout three companies and proceed to work to make sure our pilots and aircrew can fly and function safely.”
Following final 12 months’s grounding of the complete V-22 fleet, NAVAIR issued return to flight directions that restrict the flight envelope of the V-22s. For the Navy, that meant restrictions on flying the CMV-22Bs greater than half-hour from land forcing plane carriers within the Pacific to depend on the legacy C-2A Greyhound for the COD mission.
A Navy official instructed USNI Information as of Friday, the Carl Vinson Provider Strike Group was working with three CMV-22Bs and no C-2As. As on Monday, USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) was working within the Philippine Sea, based on the USNI Fleet and Marine Tracker on Monday.
The Marines have carried out the steering on their very own fleet of MV-22Bs.
“The Marine Corps has carried out a sequence of controls on a subset of MV-22 Ospreys in alignment with the NAVAIR interim flight clearance,” reads an announcement from the service.
“Affected plane will conduct operations with risk-mitigating controls. These measures guarantee we proceed to prioritize the security of our aircrew whereas sustaining the very best ranges of readiness to satisfy mission necessities. This steering shall be revisited as further information and engineering assessments turn out to be obtainable.”
