Even Uncle Sam Gets Diverted

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Shawn Rhodes
  • 927th Air Refueling Wing
Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. --  "This is your captain speaking. Due to weather conditions, we're going to have to divert our course. Connecting flights can be arranged once we're on the ground."

Such a statement is often accompanied by the moans, groans, and curses of those on the aircraft. At the airport, on the runway, or in the air, bad weather can ground or divert most airplanes. Surprisingly, the U.S. Air Force is just as susceptible to the whims of Mother Nature.

On a recent training mission, the pilots, crew and passengers of a KC-135 Stratotanker had to re-route their flight path because of bad weather. The flight was scheduled to go from MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., stop at Travis Air Force Base, Calif., for refueling and then proceed onto Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, the next day. As the plane passed over the Rocky Mountains headed for California, the aircraft commander had to make a life-and-death decision shared by civilian and military pilots: Chance his and his passengers' lives by plunging into a storm, or try to land on another runway?

The process that commercial airline and military pilots go through when confronted with bad weather is similar in many regards - they must predict if the weather is going to become nastier or dissipate and if they have enough fuel to circle the landing site until the weather is clear enough to land. That is where the similarities end, though.
For the military, rules and regulations guide operations on the ground and in the sky. Flight commanders have to answer for all their decisions, so adhering to policy is the best and usually safest route.

"We live by a lot of regulations and checklists when flying. There are even two regulations that specify how to make the call to divert the aircraft due to weather," said Maj. Danny Menashi. Maj. Menashi is a pilot with the 927th Air Refueling Wing, based out of MacDill. He was the aircraft commander for the KC-135, carrying 23 other crew members and passengers on a training mission recently.

Military pilots have to strike a balance between following regulations and using common sense when making the decision to divert their course. For commercial airline pilots, factors such as cost and the input of corporate headquarters play a larger role.

"In the (commercial) airline industry, we're more profit-driven, so we don't carry much fuel," said Maj. Trey Hall. When he is not serving as a pilot with the 927th Air Refueling Wing, Major Hall is a Boeing-737 pilot for Southwest Airlines. "Because we don't have much fuel on a civilian jet, making the call to divert course and land has to be a split-second decision."

Southwest pilots communicate with their dispatch center, which is based in Dallas, Major Hall said. The center keeps their pilots updated on weather patterns. Dispatch is a lot more involved in the process of making the call to divert a civilian aircraft, he added.

Fortunately for Major Hall, that is a decision he has never had to make in four years of flying commercial airliners. Commercial airlines and military flights may have different reasons for diverting course due to weather, but both have to worry about a catastrophic mistake when trying to go around a storm: running out of fuel while tens of thousands of feet above the earth.

"We had to look at how much fuel we had left after crossing the continental United States, and the severity of the weather at Travis," Major Menashi said about his recent mission. "There was the possibility we could have circled around Travis waiting for the weather to clear up. However, if we found we couldn't land anywhere near Travis and were low on fuel, we could have been in trouble."

After making the call to land, choosing the landing site carries far-reaching repercussions for both military and civilian pilots. Whereas civilian pilots have to worry about disgruntled passengers and connecting flights, military pilots have to worry about getting their plane back in the air at all.

"Most civilian airports and (some) air bases can't provide the maintenance military aircraft may need . . . it limits our options on where we can land" Major Hall said. "Most international airports can service the standard 737 and 747 jets that take off and land there."

Although military pilots are trained to land their aircraft on primitive fields, they have to take into account which primary and alternate landing sites can provide the routine maintenance their planes will require. In the case of the recent training mission, even the alternate sites around their original destination at Travis Air Force Base were unusable.

"The weather around Travis Air Force Base wasn't going to work for us ... there was low cloud cover and high winds" said Major Menashi. "We even looked at the alternate landing sites we planned. The weather over the entire west coast wouldn't work for us."

The aircraft commander made the call to land at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. Located on the outskirts of Las Vegas, the base was not experiencing the same harsh weather as the west coast, and it had the maintenance facilities and personnel to get it ready to continue on to Hickam Air Force Base the next day.

Once the flight commander lands his aircraft on a military base that can provide maintenance services for his aircraft, the larger problem is solved. Because military personnel are either training for or conducting real-world operations when they are flying, everything provides an opportunity to learn. While on the ground, servicemembers can continue to study their checklists, see if that day's mission could be improved and go over the next day's flight plan. When a commercial aircraft is diverted because of weather and lands at another airport, the headache is just starting for the passengers.

"We'll have (civilian) passengers get off the airplane and call their families in their destination city. Their families tell them the bad weather has passed, and they'll wonder why the pilots don't get them back in the air. What they don't realize is that when an airport is closed and then opens up, you have all the flights trying to get back in at the same time. It creates one heck of a traffic jam." Major Hall said with a smile.

For Major Menashi's crew and passengers, the diversion to Nellis Air Force Base was just the beginning of their training mission. Ahead of them was a flight across the Pacific Ocean and back. After this first 12-hour day of flying, some well-earned rest and relaxation was welcome.

There are worse places for a servicemember to be laid-over than Las Vegas, after all.