I woke up a few hours ahead of our expected alert for our flight home. It had been a long trip and we were two days late getting home, but the entire crew was eager to depart. After a run along the main drag of the town next to the airbase, I returned to find my crew chief in uniform waiting for a bus to take him to the jet. Apparently, flight line maintenance had found a cracked lens on the rotating beacon under the belly of our jet. I decided to call in before they turned our mole hill of a problem into a mountain.
It was already too late. I was informed that they did not have a new lens. A part would have to be driven from another base, several hours away. I suggested that they remove the light assembly, cover the hole with aviation speed tape, and we’d get a one-time waiver for a daytime flight back to our home station. They had already considered that; however, the hole was too big to cover with speed tape. How about fabricating a sheet metal plate to cover the hole? They had that covered also; their sheet metal shop could not fabricate a plate of the required thickness. We were broke and it looked doubtful that we’d be fixed within our alert window. We’d be looking at least one more day away from home.
Before I could pass the word to my soon to be dejected crew, I received another nugget from the command post. They wanted me to call TACC for a mission change. Um, excuse me? We were going to be three days past our scheduled return date and they had a mission change for us? Not good.
I called the Duty Officer at TACC and was informed of our new mission: they wanted us to rescue a jet broken in Canada. We’d fly in the parts they needed along with a maintenance crew to make the repairs. I mentioned that we were broken as well; perhaps there was another C-17 on the East Coast that wasn’t broken that could fly the mission. After all, there are three C-17 bases on the eastern seaboard. How could we be the only one available?
But it had already been decided that we were their crew, regardless of logic. The same maintenance team that was driving the part to us would fix our jet and then fly with us to Canada to fix the other jet. I also discovered that TACC thought the other broken jet was in Quebec, but the 4-digit ICAO code was for a Canadian airfield in British Columbia. A simple error had caused TACC to reach out to what they thought was the closest aircraft to fly the mission. I pointed out that a jet already on the West Coast could have the stuck aircraft fixed much sooner; hell, even a pair of commercial airline tickets would have the maintenance team in Canada faster than we could, and for far less money. Our jet costs $3,000 plus per hour to fly; putting a couple of maintenance guys on a commercial flight would run around $600 per person. But TACC wasn’t interested in alternative solutions. They already had a solution - us.
And there was one last parting gift; the other jet was a higher priority mission with plenty of attention from the star level – meaning some general officer somewhere was quite interested in moving the cargo and troops stuck with the jet. So there was a chance that when we landed in Canada, the other crew would move the cargo to our jet and continue their mission, leaving us stuck with their broken aircraft. We’d be overdue three or more days, stuck perhaps a four-hour drive from our home base.
As you can guess, these latest developments didn’t go over well with my crew, especially the ones who had wanted to fly past our legal duty day the night prior. I called our squadron back home to let them know what had occurred and asked if my co-pilot could be allowed to buy an airline ticket home to save his vacation. However, he felt that we would still make it back home in time, even with the Canadian detour, as long as we didn’t lose our aircraft when we landed. But even in a worst case scenario, he would be able to catch a flight from Canada to make it home in time.
So we got another night in a small town on the East Coast. The next day, our aircraft was fixed and we were off for Canada. Checking our dispatch paperwork, we were scheduled to continue with our aircraft to our home base. Unless we were told otherwise, I planned to fly the mission as scheduled. I sure wasn’t going to stick around once we landed to see if something changed.
We descended into quite a storm on Canada’s West Coast. Gusty winds and driving rain greeted us as we emerged from the overcast clouds and foamy whitecaps furiously rippled across the Strait of Georgia beneath us. The weather radar was painting some seriously dangerous storm cells scattered around us – shades of red and magenta on the screen reflected areas we took extra caution to avoid. It was easy enough to find the airfield and we maneuvered for a visual approach. The winds were blowing plenty of seagulls over the airfield; if we were unlucky enough to hit one, we’d be stuck in soggy British Columbia as well. Fortunately, we landed uneventfully and taxied to the military ramp.
We deplaned the maintenance team with our engines still running and called for our outbound clearance, which we had conveniently filed en route to Canada. I had already checked NOTAMS and the weather, so there was nothing else to be done. I didn’t want to give anybody the opportunity to trump us and take our jet. So as soon as the tower read us our clearance, we taxied out and took the runway. Soon we were hurtling down the rain-slicked runway, gulls practically whizzing past us, and eagerly leapt into the saturated sky.
Mission accomplished. We were going home.
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