Hill Air Force Base airmen keep plane fit for 30 consecutive missions

HILL AIR FORCE BASE — Commanders in Afghanistan and at home are cheering aircraft maintainers from Hill Air Force Base for their work in keeping an F-16 flying for 30 consecutive sorties without a mechanical failure.

The group's commander, Col. Lawrence Gatti, said he has never heard of such a feat in 32 years.

"No one person makes an aircraft fly 30 code 1 sorties. So I think it is a pretty remarkable achievement," Gatti said of the 455th Expeditionary Maintenance Group in an Air Force story by Staff Sgt. Richard Williams.

A code 1 sortie is a mission in which an aircraft returns with no maintenance needs that would affect flight safety or mission accomplishment, the story states.

But the F-16 with tail number 2119 has made 30 code 1 sorties and counting.

That particular plane is 21 years old, said Capt. Mike Byrd, 388th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron operations officer at Hill Air Force Base.

"It's not like a car," he said. "There's a lot of stress involved in these things."

Stateside, Byrd and Chief Master Sgt. Rob Thiel, a 388th Aircraft Maintenance superintendent, say they can't sing enough praises for their maintainers in Afghanistan.

Thiel said he's never heard of 30 consecutive code 1 sorties before.

"And these are combat sorties," he said. That means the planes fly for six to eight hours at a time and come back with no problems. "That is impressive."

"It's hard enough to do with a new aircraft," Byrd said.

If you were to compare aircraft maintenance to NASCAR, aircraft maintainers are just like a pit crew.

They pull tires, refuel aircraft and check avionics, hydraulics and radar.

"(It's) so that pilot will have a safe and reliable aircraft," Thiel said. "We are extremely proud of what's going on over there."

But maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that Hill's maintainers can keep a plane going for so many missions.

The wing recently received a meritorious unit award from the Air Force, Thiel said.

Hill Air Force Base Lt. Col. Brad Lyons, commander of the 34th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron in Afghanistan, said his maintainers are doing an outstanding job.

"They never forget for a moment that there is an airman whose life is at risk every time one of our aircraft goes up, and by extension the lives of countless ground forces whose lives would be put at additional risk if our planes did not show up to support them on a daily basis," he is quoted as saying in the story.

e-mail: jdougherty@desnews.com twitter: desnewsdavis