Some F-22 pilots asking not to fly the jet

While I was unable to attend this\n(30 April) morning's briefing at Joint Base Langley-Eustis down in Hampton, Virginia,\npress reports from the event indicate that the US Air Force is admitting that a\n\"small number\" of Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor pilots are refusing to fly the\njet.

\"Obviously it's a very sensitive\nthing because we are trying to ensure that the community fully understands all\nthat we're doing to try to get to a solution,\" says Air Combat Command chief\nGen Mike Hostage as quoted by the Associated Press.

The USAF has not found the root\ncause of 11 hypoxia-like cases since the Raptor fleet returned to flight in\nSeptember after a near five-month stand-down.  The F-22 fleet has flown about 12,000 times since then.

Incidentally, I had known that\nseveral pilots were planning on asking not to fly the Raptor for weeks, but\ncould not report it because it might compromise the sources. I had asked USAF PA to confirm on the record--this appears to be it.

Hostage told the assembled\nreporters at Langley that he would get himself checked out in the Raptor and\nfly the jet until the cause of the F-22's oxygen woes are discovered and fixed.

\"I'm going to check out and fly the\nairplane so I can understand exactly what it is they're dealing with. The day\nwe figure out what the problem is I will stop flying because we don't have\nenough sorties for all of our combat aviators to get as much training as they\nneed,\" Hostage says--via AP.

Hostage did address the recent\nreports of the F-22 deploying to Al Dhafra, in the United Arab Emirates. But he\nwouldn't confirm where the jet was deployed to, or where the aircraft came from--though\nthe jet has deployed to Al Dhafra before.

However, I have it on good authority\nthat the jets came from the 7^th Fighter Squadron at the 49^th\nWing, based at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. My understanding is that\nthis was simply part of their Air Expeditionary Forces rotation.

Indeed, Hostage says the deployment\nwas previously planned.

Incidentally, I'm off to Marietta, Georgia, in the morning to attend the delivery ceremony for the last jet 10-4195 on 2 May.