Final exam: small unit at Lackland has big tanker-testing responsibility

Citizen Airman, June, 2004 by James Coburn

The big responsibility for testing the airworthiness of modified KC-135 Stratotankers rests with a small Air Force Reserve unit at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas.

The 23-person 313th Flight Test Flight certifies Stratotankers after they go through either programmed depot maintenance or a new avionics upgrade.

"We accomplish an elevated-risk mission, which is unlike any other mission in the Air Force," said Lt. Col. Tim Kinnaird, 313th FEFF commander. "Our basic mission is to verify the airworthiness of the airplanes (after work performed by a civilian contractor) before they go back to the operational Air Force."

The test flight has offices at the Boeing Aerospace Support Center at nearby Kelly USA, where Boeing workers overhaul or modify the aircraft. About 70 percent of the flight's people are full-time reservists, while the rest are traditional part-time reservists.

Workers spend about eight months on each KC-135 to completely overhaul the aircraft under a Department of Defense contract. Avionics upgrades take about two months.

The Reserve unit's work load more than doubled in 2003 when it began certifying KC-135s after avionics upgrades, said Lt. Col. Matt Tyykila, the flight's operations officer. He said the flight expects to certify about 45 avionics-upgraded aircraft each year, as well as about 20 aircraft after depot maintenance.

Colonel Tyykila said the flight receives about one KC-135 each week from the avionics upgrade program, and it takes "two days at the most" to certify the aircraft for return to the operational Air Force.

It takes two to five days to certify aircraft after they undergo the more extensive depot maintenance program, because they have not been flown for eight months, the colonel said. Like a ear that has been in storage, aircraft systems, especially seals in the fuel system, tend to malfunction after months of inactivity.

Colonel Tyykila, one of the flight's three navigators, said flight members do a lot of pre-checks on the ground before flying a plane. If they find something amiss, they tell Boeing workers.

"We don't turn the wrenches," he said. "We check as it goes through the air that everything is performing as it was designed to."

Colonel Kinnaird, one of the 313th's nine pilots, said that while flying a newly overhauled aircraft is a bit risky, flight crews do not face many emergencies.

"We deal with a lot that's not quite right," he said, "and what we try to do is give back to the operational community the best product we can."

During an airworthiness flight, which takes about 2 1/2 hours, crewmembers check the engines, check controllability and generally take the aircraft through its paces, Colonel Tyykila said.

He said the pilots even shut down the engines, one by one, and start them back up again.

"It's an emergency procedure, but we do it all the time," the colonel said.

He said the KC-135E can fly on two of its four jet engines, while the R model can fly on just one engine.

The boom operator ensures the refueling arm functions properly.

When the crew returns to Lackland, it performs several approaches and checks different systems during touch-and-go landings, Colonel Tyykila said.

Colonel Kinnaird said the flight's test pilots are not Chuck Yeager types who venture into a flight envelope that has never been done before.

"We're testing a known quantity," he said. "We know very specifically the operational limits of the aircraft, systems and flight envelope. If the aircraft is not capable of achieving or attempts to exceed a known limit, we make sure it's fixed properly, giving the warfighter a fully mission-capable aircraft."

(Mr. Coburn is assigned to the 37th Training Wing Office of Public Affairs at Lackland AFB.)