Maintaining smooth operations

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Janine Thibault
  • 354th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska --  Just as a maintainer needs aircraft parts at their home station, they may also need replacement parts during their training at RED FLAG-Alaska 10-4.

To keep planes operable maintainers need to have somewhere to turn for a reliable source of aircraft parts.

That's where the 354th Logistics Readiness Squadron Material Management flight comes in. They stock the parts maintainers need to repair equipment.

"Maintainers are kind of the tip of the spear. The closer you are to the flightline the higher the tempo is on what you do," said Tech. Sgt. Prude, the 354th LRS NCO in charge of central storage. "When pilots come back with necessary work to be done on the jet, maintainers only have so much time to troubleshoot the plane to find out what's wrong with it. There is a timeline that must be met in order to meet the next sortie or get that jet ready for the next day's flying schedule.

Once they're finished with their portion and the part is on order, we're the hold-up in that chain and we try to expedite what we do to get them back on the flightline," said Sergeant Prude.

All parts utilized by the base on a day-to-day basis are kept in the central storage section of the LRS warehouse. Central storage holds aircraft, civil engineer squadron, vehicle maintenance flight and additional parts the base might need.

The workflow is pretty steady and when RF-A is underway it just ramps up that much more. Any high priority items are pulled and delivered to the customer within 30 minutes.

"When it comes to RED FLAG-Alaska and getting the parts to the maintainers, that is our permanent mission," said Sergeant Prude.

Several warehouses support maintainers whenever they need a piece of equipment to complete their task. Since parts may be needed on the weekend, Icemen maintain shifts 24/7 to support the RF-A maintainers and other work on base that demands their services.

"Anytime they need parts we're available to get them out to them soon and help generate the sorties they need for their training; that is our permanent focus," said Sergeant Prude.

When RF-A is not going on, the 18th Aggressors are here to keep the storage area employed.

Pilots are constantly flying, and jets eventually need maintenance, so when the maintainers need supplies they come to central storage to request the necessary equipment. Central storage Airmen supply the parts in order to get the gear into the right hands.

"We are constantly working the machine where supply tasks are being printed so we can make sure the documents are being printed out and we can pull that property," said Senior Airman Sofia Maldonado-Diaz, 354th LRS central storage technician. "That way when they show up they're not sitting there waiting and we can get them back out the door and back on the line to their aircraft."

Distributing materials to Airmen is a behind the scenes task. With their attention to detail and support of Eielson's mission, the storage warehouse is able to fully support those that need their services to keep pilots flying and receiving the training they need.