News

Maintenance teams target minor fixes

  • Published
  • By Sandra Pishner
  • 446th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
MCCHORD FIELD, Wash. --  DDs, or delayed discrepancies, are the targets of a group of aircraft maintenance Reservists as they do their part to execute the C-17 global airlift mission through their Targeted Maintenance Team.

Eighteen Reservists with the 446th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron are at McChord Field for their two-week annual tour; a tour designed to maximize training opportunities and give them hands-on skills application.

Throughout the year, there are monthly targeted maintenance teams comprised of Reserve maintainers on annual tour.

"The Targeted Maintenance Team is a small group of aircraft maintainers that is comprised of various AFSCs who are charged with targeting specific aircraft that have workable deferred, or delayed, discrepancies," said Chief Master Sgt. Timothy Meyer, 446th AMXS superintendent.

"Although DDs themselves are considered minor maintenance, a unit must ensure its overall DD rate is kept as low as possible," he said. "This can be challenging at times because manpower is required to work the more critical discrepancies first, which in most cases occur unexpectedly. A unit's DD rate is one of many metrics that provides leadership a measurement of a fleet's performance and capability. "

It's not unusual for a fleet of C-17 aircraft to have several DDs on them. The maintenance team may knock out 20 to 30 of those in a day, according to Tech. Sgt. Cameron Ames, 446th AMXS crew chief.

"They target specific aircraft after pulling maintenance reports to see how many discrepancies, or items need to be fixed on a plane and they take a maintenance team out there and spend a day or two knocking down the DD rate," said Ames

During routine maintenance inspections, many minor job discrepancies are identified including missing, broken, or worn parts that will not affect the overall capability of an aircraft's ability to perform a mission," according to Master Sgt. Stanley Horn, 446th AMXS crew chief.

"These jobs are entered into a maintenance information system to identify the repair needs to be repaired when parts are ordered and down time is available. Because of JBLM's overall Ops tempo, specific time to complete these jobs is very limited," Horn said.

While knocking down the DD rate, the Reservists are also knocking out their 15 days of annual tour.

"It's a good way for people to use their annual tour," Ames said. "To come out and get out on the flightline and do some real work and not just being trained all the time. Hands-on work is bait for the Reservists, because you get to immediately see the results of your work. "

Senior Airman Bertario Lara, from Roy, Utah, agrees with Ames.

"It's been great. I've been getting a lot of hands-on experience on DDs, doing a lot of different things. It's not just regular fuel and go. It's been a good learning experience," said Lara.

And learning is one the valued benefits of the program.

"For our TRs, this experience is valuable because they are exposed to many different areas within the overall C-17 aircraft, as DDs cover several maintenance disciplines within a given aircraft," said Horn.

Several maintenance disciplines over the span of several aircraft a week.

"They try to go to a different plane each day, so we could go to seven different aircraft a week and after two weeks, we could have over 100 discrepancies taken care of. This is a very proactive program developed by the Reservists here," said Ames.

More specifically, the program is the brainchild of Meyer.

"I developed the TMT concept back in late 2010 and we set it into motion in 2011," said Meyer. "My vision was to provide Reservists with a defined set of dates throughout a fiscal year where they can perform their annual tour with a set agenda of assisting our partners, 62nd AMXS, in reducing the fleet's DD rate."

After establishing a working group of 446th AMXS air reserve technician supervisors to draft a feasible plan, the concept was employed on a small scale with only three teams, each consisting of six to eight maintainers.

"I then pitched this concept to my active-duty counterparts and they were supportive of this idea. After the first year had passed, we realized how much impact these teams had on improving the health of the fleet, so we have been gradually increasing the number of teams every year," said Meyer. "To date our TMTs, along with our active-duty partners, have contributed to a 64 percent reduction of DDs in McChord's C-17 fleet."

The team works around an aircraft's availability. It could be scheduled to fly or go into a home station check. They check the flying schedule each morning and see which aircraft are available, pull the DD report for that aircraft, and then go to work on it.

The most challenging discrepancy tackled by the current team involved an aircraft's staging lights.

"Staging lights are at the very, very top of the T-tail of a C-17," explains Ames. "Sometimes they blow, but it's not like you can just hop up there and change it. Changing those lights involves checking out the Condor. The Condor is a huge truck with a lift on it. You have to be certified on that and then of course you have to wear harnesses and lock yourself in. It takes a lot to change the staging lights. It's probably a three or four hour job. The job is actually simple; it's all the preparation that takes work."

Because of the TMT success, the plan is to have 24 teams throughout fiscal year 2014, according to Meyer.

"In addition, I have been brainstorming a plan where we would send teams to other state side C-17 units to assist in their DD reductions, but more to follow on that," said Meyer.

In the meantime, Reserve maintainers are applying their skills here. Not only are they doing quality maintenance, they're learning, having fun, and contributing to the worldwide airlift mission on a daily basis.