Military Flight Line Operations: Parts

As many of you know, I’m still in the USAF as an Avionics Specialist. Since 9/11 I’ve been on active duty three times. I thought you might find it interesting to read a diary vignette of a typical aircraft maintenance shift on a military flight line at a deployed location. I’ve left off locations and some numbers for the obvious reasons. I think you’ll see many similarities to civilian maintenance operations.

It’s 615 pm and I’m waiting with our shift’s crew for the ride from the rest area to the flight line. Everyone’s bright eyed and bushy tailed, and trading banter about what’s going on back home, the latest news, and sports scores. After going through security, we arrive at the hangar for the start of our 7pm to 7am shift. The first thing we do is locate the maintenance crews we are relieving to get a turnover; in my case our fellow avionics geeks. Supplementing the verbal turnover, we keep a written turnover of things we need to track that is kept in the avionics tool bins. I’m given the keys to the avionics van, the classified equipment, and the portable radio we call a brick. My next stop is the coffee pot. A saint from the previous shift has made a fresh batch. Whenever we deploy, the first piece of equipment out of the bins is the coffee making equipment, which everyone acknowledges is an essential piece of equipment for the proper execution of the mission. Next I head to the Maintenance Operations Center (MOC) office to get tonight’s flight schedule, and to see which aircraft may not be FMC (Fully Mission Capable) for avionics reasons. Tonight we’ll be launching three missions and recovering two. From the turnover and the MOC’s ‘big board,’ I observe that there is an open VOR write-up from a mission that has just returned. The person who runs the flight line for each shift is called the ‘Pro-Super’, and as usual he calls a crew meeting to review the night’s challenges and assignments. He informs me I can have the broke plane after it’s been refueled, and reminds me that this aircraft is due to fly tonight, great. The graveyard shift is officially underway.

BACKGROUND: When deployed overseas, a current operational practice is to piece together a new deployed squadron made up of flight and maintenance crews from as many as four different, stateside squadrons, typically. Each stateside squadron does not have to send it’s entire unit, but instead sends a proportionate share for the new, deployed unit. The newly formed, deployed unit gets a unique squadron number. One of the squadrons will be designated the ‘lead’ unit, and as imagined, leadership will be provided from their assets. If deployed for a length of time, the ‘lead unit’ responsibility will shift periodically to the other units. We can deploy anywhere in the world as long as there is a supply of fuel. Typically we’ll deploy with enough spare parts to last thirty days. The theory being that if we’re in a remote and previously ‘un-served’ location, the 30 days will provide enough time for the logistics folks to set up a distribution system to us. The parts we bring are based on historical usage, and those parts that according to the MEL (Minimum Equipment List), cannot be deferred when broke. These make up certain parts ‘kits’ that are quite standard when deploying. If we are in a previously ‘un-served’ area, we’ll likely have deployed the ground-comm folks. They’ll be busy from day one stringing coax cables all over the place from servers to satellite dishes to our terminals. The end result being that we are then hooked into the USAF logistics backbone and in a short period of time, the stateside parts folks know we exist and have operational needs, wherever we are. 

Back to my story. My broke plane is being refueled which gives me time to gather my stuff. I load the VOR simulator/tester in the van. I also get all the applicable TO’s (Technical Orders, which are the USAF’s equivalent of Maintenance Manuals), and load them into my handy helmet bag, which is similarly loaded adjacent the drivers seat. The sun has gone down and it’s starting to get nippy, so I take out my nifty military Goretex jacket, and put on the required reflective belt so no one runs me over on the busy flight line. I look out of the hangar down the flight line and see the fueling crew is finishing up. Time to run to the can and grab another cup of coffee. I’m back and standing by the van when the brick calls:

-AV1, MOC  (AV1 is my radio call sign)
-MOC, this is AV1, go ahead
-AV1, you’re cleared to aircraft XXXXXXX
-MOC, AV1 copy’s

My buddy and I jump in the van and we’re off. To find out how the rest of night goes, tune into the next blog.