McChord product improvement Airmen create training guide for C-17 aircrews

by Staff Sgt. Russ Jackson
62nd Airlift Wing Public Affairs

6/17/2014 - JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. -- Editor's Note: This is part five of a five part series on McChord's product improvement section.


The industry of aviation is at an all-time high and with hundreds of thousands of aircraft in the skies every single day, navigation systems must be on the cutting edge of technology. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft have a global mission requiring a comprehensive worldwide navigation database for their flight management systems.

The databases provide C-17 crews with the data they need to navigate the increasingly complex global airspace system. It is imperative that aircrews are proficient in loading theses navigation databases in to jets.

Previously, McChord Field has maintained a contract with civilians whose job was to load current navigation databases into the C-17 during the launch sequence of active missions. Recently, the contract ended and the responsibility to load the navigation databases fell upon the aircrews to do during their preflight checks.

Aircrews arrive at the jet about three hours prior to takeoff, and in addition to their normal preflight checks, they load the navigation databases themselves. It quickly became evident the problem was McChord aircrews were not proficient in loading the databases and they were corrupting them fairly frequently. This resulted in planes taking off late, but McChord maintainers could not understand why.

Col. Craig Gaddis, 62nd Maintenance Group commander, became aware of this issue and requested a quick and accurate resolution. Theoretically, it was a flight crew problem, however maintenance Airmen were being called to the jet during the launch sequence to diagnose the issue. When aircraft launch late, they can lose their mission and their air refueling tankers because of how precisely everything is timed out.

Gaddis enlisted the help of Master Sgt. Dennis Kauffman, 62nd Maintenance Squadron engineering and logistics liaison, from the product improvement section. Kauffman knew other bases were not having this issue and needed to know why McChord aircrews were having such difficulties.

"I started researching and found that other bases didn't have a contractor to load these databases," said Kauffman. "These bases have had their flight crews uploading this navigation database themselves for years."

He discovered aircrews were following a technical order written for those who had already received training on the navigation databases, therefore, the instructions were very brief. McChord aircrews did not have the technical knowledge, background, or the training to do it themselves.

Kauffman linked up with Airmen from maintenance operations and quality assurance and wrote a training plan for the aircrews for everything they needed to know about how to load the systems correctly and efficiently. Within days of implementing the new training plans, aircrews were no longer experiencing load problems, and missions were not delaying for this issue.
"We resolved this issue because we took the time, noticed the problem and created a training guide for the aircrews illustrating how to load these data bases and what not to do," said Kauffman. "We cut down our late departures for this issue nearly down to zero."

Kauffman has led the product improvement section for the last three years and on May 29 he retired after 22 of service to the U.S. Air Force.