B-52 Maintenance Might Get A Lot Easier Thanks to This Airman
July 12, 2024 | By David Roza
Keeping a 60-year-old B-52 bomber ready to fly takes hard work, and poor tools make that work even harder. At the 307th Maintenance Squadron at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., Tech Sgt. Jermey Vickers noticed one tool in particular was slowing down the process: the metal stands maintainers use to get up close to the wings and engines.
“The maintenance stands we were using had been purchased in 1994 and you couldn’t get parts to fix them anymore,” Vickers said in a July 11 press release. “They also were purchased used, so it’s difficult to know how old they are.”
The stands are a headache during a B-52 phase maintenance inspection, a weekslong process where dozens of maintainers have to work on the plane at the same time. The problem is that the current stands can support only two people at once, so Airmen must keep setting them up, taking them down, and setting them up again as they inspect different parts of the jet.
“Those stands were heavy and required a couple of people to move them, so there was a lot of potential for safety risks,” Vickers said.
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/air-force-b-52-maintenance-stand/
