Originally Posted by USMCFLYR

The guy I was flying with last week is a former B-52 pilot. He was telling me stories about flying the T-37s for currency in the late 70s and I'm sure the program has been around (maybe comes and goes) for quite some time. Not sure about the question as too why not EVERY MWS, but at least in the F/A world we didn't have just currency sorties (unless you counted bounce periods for carriers ops), but every other sortie was MWS specific trainng so it couldn't necessarily be accomplished in another airframe.

Yes - I heard that he was rider. A very sad and avoidable situation to be sure. As through as the pre-flight briefings are with both the pilot and the flight support people I'm more inclined to think that panic was major factor rather than lack of knowledge. After I heard that story, I made sure that my backseat riders knew how to put on/take off the mask. A few would make some remark until I related the story I had heard.

USMCFLYR