Eyeglass use by U.S. Navy jet pilots: effects on night carrier landing performance.

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that the night carrier landing performance of pilots who do not need prescriptive eyeglasses to fly is better than the performance of pilots who do. Night carrier landing scores (NCLS), age, career jet flight hours, and total career flight hours were obtained for 122 U.S. Navy fighter pilots participating in air combat maneuver training at NAS, Oceana, VA. of the pilots with NCLS, 16 used a prescribed spectacle correction while flying, 106 did not. This study compared the NCLS of the two groups of pilots, those with glasses and those without. We found no significant difference in NCLS between the two groups of pilots--even when the pilots were matched on the basis of age and flight experience. We conclude that pilots who have a refractive error and are required to wear an eyeglass correction while flying perform night carrier landings as well as the pilots who have no refractive error and are permitted to fly with no eye glass correction.