Inspections keep aircraft flight-ready

Published April 25, 2008
By Senior Airman Carolyn Viss
379th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs

SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Editor's note: this is the first of a three-part series on the fabrication flight.

Ever wonder how aircraft here withstand extreme temperatures, hard landings, frequent sorties, and tight maneuvers without falling apart?

They do because the 379th Expeditionary Maintenance Squadron non-destructive inspections shop, a seven-person section of the fabrication flight, inspects the birds frequently for cracks, corrosion, wear and heat damage.

"We [use] five primary methods of testing to locate and characterize material conditions and reveal flaws that can lead to failures," said Master Sgt. Steven McCabe, 379th EMXS NDI section chief. "We use non-invasive techniques to determine the integrity of a material, component or structure."

Using Eddy currents, fluorescent penetrants, magnetic particles, radiography and ultrasonic devices, they ensure aviation safety for transient aircraft, wing assets, tenant units, and coalition aircraft assigned here.

[We] perform specific hourly inspections on engines, wing joints, and various other areas of the aircraft, especially in areas that may have a history of showing defects, said the master sergeant from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas.

Not all inspections are on a specific time frame, said Senior Airman Trevor Knapp, one of the inspectors in the shop deployed from Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D. The schedule varies according to the technical orders for each specific aircraft.

The B-1s, for instance, have scheduled inspections every 200 and 600 hours.

Sometimes, these dedicated Airmen take their work outside maintenance row and onto the flightline to run inspections on a specific aircraft part.

"[Here], we work on many different airframes compared to home station, and it's a constant learning environment," Airman Knapp said. "We have to stay flexible and do the best we can with what we have."

As a first-time deployer, he said he likes his job because, "I know that what we do directly supports the Global War on Terrorism."

A "hands-on" kind of man, he went to college for two years and got his associate's degree in automotive technology, worked at a car dealership as a mechanic, and finally joined the Air Force in 2006.

"It's rewarding because we can prevent a very expensive aircraft from going down and taking the lives of our [crews]," he said. "It gives [me] a great sense of pride knowing there is a change being made by what we do. The environment is strict, but it has to be in order for us to be part of a successful fighting force. We're just a small piece of a big machine that has to have 100 percent from everyone to work effectively."

Sergeant McCabe, who cross-trained into the career field five years ago, said it takes dedicated Airmen with practiced expertise to perform the job.

They are "very independent," he said, and utilize sound judgment to determine material conditions. The only way to measure their products is thru flight hours and sortie numbers.

"We don't produce a product that you can see, like the rest of maintenance row [does]," said the seasoned noncommissioned officer with 15 years of Air Force service. "It takes a high level of integrity to complete our tasks. Nobody re-inspects or is able to look at a product and tell how good of a job [we've] done."