Lights Out

After landing in Germany following our trans-Atlantic flight from Maine, we were given the bare minimum time off – 16 hours to our next takeoff – for a mission heading downrange to the Sandbox. It was an aeromedical evacuation flight to Afghanistan, a scheduled run to pick up troops returning to Germany for treatment they could not receive downrange. I have always liked flying medical flights; it is much more rewarding for me to transport our wounded warriors than moving boxes and crates containing who knows what.

The only drawback to these flights is managing the chaos; trying to get all the people and agencies responsible for an on-time takeoff is somewhat like herding cats. The medical crews arrived with their equipment and supplies, the aerial port had installed a comfort pallet onboard – containing two additional lavatories and a large galley with additional refrigerators and ovens, maintenance was working a last minute problem, and not enough fuel had been loaded. Yet it all came together and we managed to take off late, but before the airfield closed for the night.

I was in the seat for the flight for several hours as we crossed Eastern Europe and coasted out over the Black Sea. After reviewing our routing into Afghanistan, I climbed out of the seat to heat up my dinner. Just as I put my food in the comfort pallet oven, most of the lights inside the aircraft went out, plunging us into near darkness.

I practically vaulted up the stairs to the flight deck as alarms were alerting us to a major electrical failure. We pulled out our technical guidance and determined that we had lost two electrical buses controlling all of our exterior lighting and much of the inside lighting. In addition, we lost part of our flight controls (we have redundant systems, so it was a negligible loss). It was also impossible to fix during flight. It didn't seem wise to continue to Afghanistan with an aircraft with electrical problems. If we couldn’t fix it on the ground there, we’d be stuck. So we elected to divert to Turkey.

We coordinated for a 180-degree turn over the Caspian Sea and pulled out our charts to figure out the best routing to the American airbase in Turkey. Since the war in Iraq in 2003, the Turks have only allowed a certain number of cargo aircraft supporting the war to transit that base on a regular basis. We knew they’d have issues with us diverting there, so when Ankara air traffic control started asking why we were diverting, we declared an emergency. They immediately gave us the green light and direct routing to the airbase, which we happily took. Had we neglected to declare an emergency, it was likely that we would have been denied entry.

I could see the airbase fire trucks waiting for us while we were still 10 miles out on final approach. As we crossed the runway threshold, they started rolling and met us as we taxied clear of the runway. After determining that we were in no danger, they terminated the emergency and we taxied to parking, where we gave the jet to maintenance. We had previously chased down wiring schematics in our technical data, leading us to believe that either the comfort pallet installed in our cargo hold was to blame or there was a short in the electrical bus that controlled power to the comfort pallet.

At any rate, our day was done. It would take electricians too much time to determine where the electrical short was, so we headed off to crew rest. By the time we checked in our equipment, cleared the notoriously slow Turkish Customs, and found billeting rooms for the medical crew and my flight crew, the sun was already up. We were set up to takeoff in 16 hours – the bare minimum – if we were fixed. Another aircraft had been tasked to pick up our mission, so we’d return to Germany and wait for another mission downrange. Some of the crew was eager to hit the local off-base market to shop, but it had already been a long and tiring day. I was quickly off to sleep, despite the daylight streaming through my broken window blinds, dreaming of Turkish delights.