Travis participates in Air Force wide Safety Review Day

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. James Hodgman
  • 60th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – The Air Force mission to fly, fight and win comes with great risk. The service’s aircraft are flown for thousands of hours each year supporting a variety of operations including combat missions and humanitarian relief.

Maintenance professionals inspect and maintain those aircraft according to a strict schedule. The planes fly through extreme weather, combat zones and often land in austere locations.

According to an email sent to all wing commanders across the service, Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force Chief of Staff, the manned aviation flight mishap rate has increased since the beginning of the fiscal year.

“To date, we have experienced 15 Class A mishaps, 319 Class C mishaps and have lost 18 Airmen,” Goldfein stated. “Our men and women have volunteered to give their last full measure for America’s security. It is our responsibility as leaders to leave no stone unturned when it comes to providing the tools, resources and leadership to accomplish their mission and return to their families. We cannot afford to lose a single Airman or weapon system due to preventable mishaps.”

A Class A mishap is an accident that results in a fatality, permanent disability, destruction of an aircraft or damage exceeding $2 million. Class B mishaps are accidents that result in hospitalization of more than three personnel, permanent partial disability or between $500,000 and $1,999,999 in damage. Class C mishaps are accidents that result in injury or illness leading to a permanent change of job, loss of work or damage exceeding $50,000 but less than $500,000.

In an effort to prevent the next mishap, Goldfein directed all Air Force bases with a flying and maintenance mission to hold a Safety Review Day by May 21, the day Travis Air Force Base, California, observed its Safety Review Day.

“The focus of the safety review was to identify gaps and seams that exist or may be developing that could lead to future mishaps or unsafe conditions for our Airmen,” stated Goldfein.

Lt. Col. Vince Livie, 60th Air Mobility Wing chief of safety, said taking some time to ensure missions are flown as safely as possible is important.

“Our intent was to take a day to focus on safety,” he said. “We stopped local training flights and minimized operational training missions and other activities as much as possible to focus ourselves on a safety mindset. Across the Air Force we’ve already had more mishaps for manned aircraft than we’ve had in previous years and that’s very concerning.”

The objective of the safety review day was to identify potential issues and prevent mishaps from happening, said Livie.

“The overall goal was to not just discuss the mishaps from the previous year, but ask ourselves what is going to be the next mishap,” he said. “Let’s look for gaps and seams that are out there, whether that be in mission planning, briefing, debriefing, execution, risk assessment or in our training. Let’s identify the gaps we have and do all we can to prevent the next mishap.”

The safety review day featured presentations from senior leaders, a review of Class A mishaps including a WC-130 crash in Georgia that killed 9 Airmen May 2, as well as small group discussions where aircrew members and maintainers shared their experiences.

Lt. Col. Erik Fisher, 21st Airlift Squadron commander, said taking time to reflect and learn from others is incredibly valuable.

“We are deployed all over the world doing the mission every day,” he said.  “Having the opportunity to pause and collect our thoughts to reflect, discuss and ultimately to learn, that was our focus. If you stop learning, or if you stop seeking out opportunities to learn from others, from their mistakes and from your own, than you could cease to be safe and effective.”

Pilots and loadmasters from the 21st AS held small group discussions where they shared their experiences and openly shared their mistakes in an effort to enhance learning with the intent of preventing those same mistakes from occurring in the future.  

“It’s important for us to slow down sometimes and ensure we are doing things right,” said Staff Sgt. Maranda Trujillo, 21st AS C-17 Globemaster III loadmaster. “We watched a lot of simulations of how aircraft went down, including the C-17 that crashed at Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, a few years back. That one hit close to home.”

The 21st AS operates the C-17 and has flown the cargo jet to support numerous missions including Operation Inherent Resolve, which is the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, as well as several humanitarian missions such as hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico in September 2017.

As a loadmaster, Trujillo is responsible for the safe loading of cargo and personnel onto the aircraft. She was one of the loadmasters who flew on a hurricane relief mission to Puerto Rico.

“We delivered food, water, generators, power carts, personnel and their equipment to aid relief efforts after Puerto Rico was hit by a massive hurricane,” she said.

However, the equipment, personnel and supplies couldn’t have been delivered unless Trujillo and her team worked together to mitigate risk and complete the mission safely.  

“We work as a team,” she said.  “Everybody is part of the crew and anyone can speak up if they see something that makes them uncomfortable. No matter how many hours you’ve flown or what your rank is, you could be the one to save the aircraft from something minor or a serious incident. That culture has the potential to save the aircraft, lives and ultimately, our mission.”

Fostering that atmosphere where anyone who sees something potentially unsafe can speak up is vital, said Fisher.

“We must be willing to speak up and learn from mistakes,” he said. “That culture is only built on a foundation of trust where people can freely admit their mistakes, go through a debrief of a mission and have the humility to say, ‘I made this mistake or I was thinking this and it wasn’t right’ and learn from that. It’s hard to learn from those experiences when people are unwilling to freely admit their mistakes.”

Fisher said he wants his Airmen to feel empowered when they’re flying missions all over the world to do what’s right.

“When we step on the aircraft we’re our crew position, not the rank on our shoulders, everyone is equally free and expected to speak up,” he said. “That could be the 18-year-old loadmaster in the back of the airplane and she voices a concern to a lieutenant colonel who is at the controls. That’s the environment we expect.”

“We’ve seen over the years different examples when that didn’t exist and bad things happen,” he said. “People must be able to speak freely before something catastrophic occurs.”

Livie hopes all Airmen who participated in the safety review day understand safety is everyone’s responsibility.

“Safety is everyone’s job,” he said. “Safety’s not something you can take a break from. It must be at the forefront of everything we do. It’s not the kind of thing that we only take a look at during a safety review day, it’s something that’s inherent in everything we do.”

The safety office at Travis has compiled a 65-page report with feedback from those who participated in the safety review day. More than 700 Airmen provided feedback on a range of topics including training, mission planning and risk management. The report will be provided to Air Force leadership.