A matter of life and death: How this crew chief kept the planes flying during the Kabul evacuation
“It was a ‘this needs to happen, it needs to happen now’ kind of thing.”
BY DAVID ROZA | PUBLISHED NOV 23, 2022 8:39 AM
Fifty-one airmen at Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina received one of the most prestigious awards in the Air Force on Monday in recognition of their performance during Operation Allies Refuge, the mission where coalition forces and civilian partners evacuated more than 124,000 people from Afghanistan before the U.S. military fully withdrew from the country on Aug. 30, 2021.
Among the 51 Distinguished Flying Cross recipients was Tech Sgt. Ethan Schaffner, whose job as a flying crew chief was to ride on a C-17 transport jet and address any mechanical problems that came up mid-flight. Again and again, the jet flew to Kabul, where the crew kept the engines running as they offloaded cargo or passengers, took on equipment or evacuees, then flew back to Al-Udeid Air Base, Qatar, where Schaffner and his fellow maintainers would inspect the entire jet so it could be ready for the next trip.
There were hundreds of aircraft that flew in and out of Kabul during Operation Allies Refuge, including more than half of America’s 222 C-17s. Most of those aircraft had flying crew chiefs aboard, and Schaffner himself was part of a group of six airmen split into teams of two, with each team accompanying a jet back and forth out of Kabul. They would take care of their jets mid-flight and lead the inspection and repair efforts when they landed back at Al-Udeid.
Keeping an aircraft in working order is no easy thing, especially in the heat, dust, and constant use of flying back-to-back evacuation missions across southwest Asia in the middle of August.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-force-dfc-flying-crew-chief/
