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PERSCO gets warfighter home

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Kristina Barrett
  • 386th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
SOUTHWEST ASIA --  Personnel Support for Contingency Operations, or PERSCO teams, work to track and account for Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen across the Central Command area of responsibly. However, one team here has the distinct honor of sending these warfighters home to family and friends.

The Theater Gateway outbound team partners with the United States Army at the Life Support Area here with key liaison duties for arranging, processing, and manifesting travel for leave, rest and recuperation, and redeployment. The five-Airman team are the subject matter experts navigating the Tactical Personnel System and informing leaders of flight availability, which sustains force movement in the AOR and ensures safety and accountability of passengers during manifesting.

"There's zero percent tolerance for error," said Tech. Sgt. Sara Rico, noncommissioned officer in charge of the gateway team. "What we do is so important and we must abide by FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) guidelines for manifesting passengers," said Rico.

There's a lot of job training that the Airmen undergo when they arrive on the gateway team.

"We are personnelists, not logisticians, so this job is completely out of our skill set," she explained. "But like anything, it's a learning process and it's incredibly rewarding for everyone on the team to do this job."

Working at the gateway is very unpredictable, the Airmen said. It's normal for a planeload of people to show up with very little notice.

Being flexible is the key, said Staff Sgt. Melynda Vaden. "And good customer service skills!

"We answer the same question over and over but to the customer, they're asking it for the first time." she explained.

It's a massive job to "herd" up to 300 people at a time through the leave, R&R and redeployment process - the team's flexibility, combined with their patience, allows them to juggle the logistics of getting everyone processed and where they need to be.

"It's very important for us to take charge and control the crowd," Rico said. "If you don't then you will get run over and nothing will get done."
But the best part of the job?

"We get to be the ones to send them home," Vaden said.

The ultimate responsibility of the team is coordinating airflow for deploying and redeploying members and arranging commercial air, motor, and water transportation of personnel, material, and household goods. They work around-the-clock processing and manifesting all branches of service in and out of the AOR. They're also the travel focal point for Commanders, First Sergeants, Chiefs, and Sergeant Majors ensuring military members are properly booked for emergency travel when required.

Once travelers are booked on flights, they go through customs and then into lock-down until their flight. The theater gateway team is with them throughout the whole process - from the time they touch down here until they take to the skies bound for home. The process is long and detailed, but rewarding for these Airmen.

"The satisfaction of getting these servicemembers home makes everything worthwhile," Rico said. "Seeing the looks on their faces when they know they get to see their families is what keeps us motivated."