AMC stage crews get Airmen to the fight quickly

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Chris Vadnais
Balad Air Base, Iraq (AFPN) --  A C-17 Globemaster III from Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, landed here June 17, delivering 23 Airmen and 41,000 pounds of equipment in support of the global war on terror.

The Pacific Air Forces jet had traveled more than 7,200 miles in 21 hours of flight, stopping at McChord Air Force Base, Wash., to pick up the passengers and equipment, and again at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, to change crews.

"One of the huge pluses for the C-17 is that it has the ability to have almost unlimited range with aerial refueling capability," said Capt. John Ramsey III, a 535th Airlift Squadron C-17 pilot and the aircraft commander for the Hickam to Ramstein leg of the trip.

"Its limitation is actually the aircrew--how long you can keep an aircrew in the air," he said.

A basic C-17 aircrew consists of two pilots and one loadmaster. While this three-person crew can handle many missions, it is limited to a 16-hour flying day. Bringing an additional pilot and loadmaster allows for in-flight aircrew rest cycles, which extends the maximum length of a duty day to 24 hours.

But sometimes even that isn't enough. The downrange leg of this trip--about five hours to Balad Air Base, Iraq and five more back to Ramstein--would have put the crew way over their 24-hour limit. To get the passengers and equipment to Iraq as quickly as possible, an Air Mobility Command stage crew continued the mission from Ramstein Air Base while the Hickam crew rested.

AMC deploys aircrews--stage crews--to select bases to speed up air mobility. These crews wait for opportunities like this to finish missions that may otherwise lay over to allow time for crew rest.

Using AMC's stages, the limitation imposed by an aircrew's duty day is overcome simply and efficiently. By the time the Hickam crew is alerted for duty again, the jet will be back from Balad and ready to start its journey home.

Capt. Nicholas Delcour, a C-17 pilot with the 7th Airlift Squadron out of McChord Air Force Base, Wash., and the aircraft commander for the Ramstein to Balad leg of this mission, said the best thing about being part of a stage crew is that he's helping passengers get downrange more quickly.

"I've been on those missions, those trips where people haven't slept in 40 hours," he said. "I've been that [passenger] on the back end of the airplane, and you're just tired and hot and you're dirty. You just want to get where you're going and get started on your job, so I'm sure they appreciate that. To me, that's the most rewarding part of it," he said.

Four of Hickam's eight C-17s are set aside for flying missions in support of the U.S. Pacific Command. 13th Air Force's Air Mobility Division (AMD) handles their taskings. When these jets aren't employed by AMD, Hickam crews can take Air Mobility Command missions like this one, assigned by the Tanker Airlift Control Center (TACC).