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As jets take off and people disperse from their spots on the flightline, one tends to wonder how they get to and from each place. Do they walk everywhere? Or do they borrow a car?
If you guessed borrowing a car, you might have won a million dollars on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire,” but in the Air Force, borrowing a car takes place with the 354th Logistics Readiness Squadron vehicle management fleet.
Senior Airman Shawn Sharkey, a 354th LRS fleet management and analysis journeyman, is an essential player in the borrowing of vehicles for out of town units participating in RED FLAG-Alaska exercises.
Airman 1st Class Jonathan Patino, a 354th LRS vehicle maintenance journeyman, and Senior Airman Jonathon Spaeth, a 354th LRS fire truck and refueling maintenance journeyman, also play key roles in maintaining the vehicle fleet for RF-A participant use.
“There are a pool of vehicles that are assigned to the 353rd Combat Training Squadron,” said Sharkey. “The incoming units all get vehicles to drive around and to transport their people to their aircraft.”
The vehicle management fleet also procures rental cars from downtown Fairbanks and each unit gets a certain amount of those as well.
Patino’s role in the fleet includes maintenance operations.
“We keep vehicles up and running and safe for operators,” said Patino. “Our operators depend on these vehicles being in safe conditions at all times.”
Spaeth fixes the fire trucks and fuel trucks. This is to ensure fuel gets to the aircraft and, in case of emergencies, fire trucks can safely make it to the flightline to stop fires.
“Being sure the trucks are in the best condition they can be is an extremely important aspect of my job,” said Spaeth. “It’s essential to the mission; if the fuel trucks break, the aircraft can’t take off and the mission doesn’t run. They need to be in tip top shape.”
Sharkey explained that 86 vehicles are provided at CTS for all of the incoming units and about 80 vehicles are secured from rental companies.
“The units come in, we download their equipment and aircraft and issue them their vehicles,” said Sharkey. “They often are allowed one 6-passanger truck, one 15-passanger truck, a bread van, and one aircrew ground equipment bobtail and one ammo bobtail.”
Before the vehicles are given to each unit, Patino does routine maintenance to make sure the vehicles are safe for use.
“Generally when international units come and they have rental cars, they bring them in periodically for routine maintenance things,” said Patino. “We also do large maintenance work, but that’s normally handled by customer service and the mobile maintenance crew.”
Despite the need for so many vehicles and the factors that make it challenging, the vehicle management fleet always makes it through.
“Time is the hardest,” said Patino. “The flightline depends on those vehicles, and doing the work right and getting them out in a timely manner can sometimes be difficult.”
Sharkey mentioned that turn over times can be difficult, but they make sure all vehicles are serviceable and safe before they go out to new units.
“Getting parts is the most difficult thing for [fire truck and refueling maintenance],” said Spaeth. “There’s a lot of back research in it and fire truck parts can be hard to get a hold of.”
Despite the challenges and the turn around times, the Airmen of the vehicle management fleet ensure the participants of RF-A have safe vehicles to use during their time at Eielson. It’s one thing the units don’t have to worry about while they perform their mission.
| Date Taken: | 08.11.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 08.16.2016 17:21 |
| Story ID: | 207324 |
| Location: | EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, AK, US |
| Web Views: | 15 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Managing the fleet during RF-A 16-3, by SrA Cassandra Whitman, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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