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AGE: ground power enables air power

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Kayla Newman
  • 455th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan --  Aircraft fly in and out of Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan day and night at a constant pace. When on the ground, crew chiefs maintain the aircraft with specific equipment.

One group of Airmen at Bagram performs the maintenance on the equipment needed to get the aircraft in the air.

The Aerospace Ground Equipment shop of the 455th Expeditionary Maintenance Squadron maintains, services and performs operation checks on the ground equipment used on the aircraft at Bagram.

"We are very busy," said U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Fred Bezonia, 455th EMXS AGE flight chief. "We have about 450 pieces of equipment to maintain, with 21 personnel to do it."

The types of equipment that AGE services include; maintenance stands, heaters, air conditioners, power units, bomb lifts, oxygen carts and tank loaders.

"We do two types of maintenance here," explained Senior Airman Franky Frias, 455th EMXS AGE technician. "We do preventative maintenance, which is the scheduled maintenance and then we also perform maintenance when something breaks."

Although AGE follows a monthly scheduled maintenance calendar, equipment does still break, and when that happens they get the call to either fix a piece of equipment on the spot or bring it back to their shop for a more extensive repair.

"If something is not working right out on the flight line, maintainers call our drivers to come out," said Bezonia, deployed from Elmendorf Air Force Base, S.D. "If the drivers can't fix the equipment on the spot, they will bring it back to the shop, where we will then troubleshoot it and see what needs to be repaired."

Maintenance on a piece of equipment can range from minutes to hours to days, depending on the type of repair.

With the high tempo mission at Bagram, AGE does not let the deployed environment hinder their ability to quickly repair equipment and get it back out to the flight line.

"Being at Bagram isn't too different from being at home station," explained Frias, deployed from Moody Air Force Base, Ga. "We have strict standards that we must follow at home, so when we came here it was easy to maintain those standards."

According to Frias, one difference from home station and the deployed environment is that there are more resources to accomplish the mission here at Bagram.

"If we need something we can usually get it, without having to wait too long," said Frias. "We also know the importance of getting this equipment fixed in a timely manner, so we are really focused on getting things out to the equipment that needs to be repaired."

The Airmen assigned to AGE know that without ground support, there wouldn't be any air support.

"The work ethic is excellent here at AGE," said Bezonia. "The Airmen have adapted very well to the deployed environment. They understand the importance of having the equipment ready and getting the aircraft in the air to support the troops on the ground."