FORT LEE, Va. (March 8, 2018) -- One event is better than two.
That was the thinking behind the first Airdrop Malfunction/Safety Analysis Review Board and Static Line Symposium training event Feb. 26 - Friday at the Aerial Delivery and Field Services Department building here.
The occasion – a gathering of aerial delivery’s brain trust – was a consolidation of two separate conferences that take place at different times during the year. The decision to combine them was based on practical considerations, said Capt. Michael White, Aerial Delivery and Materiel Officer Course instructor.
“The Malfunction Review Board looks at incidents and trends in parachute operations – whether the equipment worked the way it was designed – and the Static Line Symposium reviews trends more specific to static line operations,” he said. “We figured we could condense the two into one weeklong conference to capture everything at the same time.”
A component of the Quartermaster School, ADFSD is responsible for training riggers – those responsible for packing personnel and equipment parachutes for airborne operations. It also plays a significant role in safety, training and doctrine development.
The training event drew more than 260 riggers, jumpmasters, equipment developers and administrators from the airborne communities within the Army, Air Force and Navy as well as military personnel from Canada and Australia. The conference was organized around joint and group sessions and included addresses from the QM School chief of staff and others.
The main focus of the training event, said White, was gathering subject matter experts for the purpose of ensuring there are no practices or procedures and patterns thereto that threaten the safety of airborne personnel and equipment.
During the course of the week, attendees hashed out several topics. Among them were injuries resulting from slack in static lines, said Chief Warrant Officer 5 Cortez Frazier, Army and QM School airdrop advisor.
“The jumpmaster community came to the rigger community and asked us, ‘How can we change the stowing technique on that parachute?’” he said, “and it was a simple fix (put forth) just by communicating amongst each other that will result in decreasing the amount of static line injuries during airborne operations,” he said.
Static line is an aerial delivery practice using chords to automatically open the parachutes of jumpers exiting aircraft.
The malfunctioning investigation process also was discussed at length. Frazier said one of the issues concerned some ambiguousness relating to the duties and responsibilities of key personnel among jumpmasters in the event of a malfunction incident. As a result of the discussion, “We are now going to allow jumpmasters to get the same malfunctions training that the rigger community gets so that we’re all educated on the same process,” said Frazier.
The training event facilitated objective discussion and the exchange of ideas, especially in the area of safety, said White.