C-17s' flight time piles up faster than Air Force expected

In the past seven years, the Air Force has flown its C-17s hard, "burning up" the cargo jets faster than military planners expected, a top Air Force general says.

Pilots routinely drop C-17s into gut-wrenching dives to reach war-zone landing strips. They land them on primitive runways, kicking up dirt and gravel. Insurgents have hit planes with bullets and missiles.

All told, since 2002, the C-17 fleet of 180 jets has registered a whopping 850,000 hours. Last year alone, the planes flew 18,000 missions, an average of 100 per plane.

The C-17 is designed to fly a minimum of 30,000 hours during its 30-year lifetime, or about 1,000 hours a year. But Gen. Arthur J. Lichte, head of Air Mobility Command, recently told Air Force Magazine: "We know we're going so fast that … instead of a 30-year life, it's only going to be a 25-year life, or 22."

Lichte said usage rates have exceeded 1,500 to 1,800 hours on some planes in recent years.

The first C-17 delivered to Charleston Air Force

Base, the Spirit of Charleston, is now 15 years old, still in its prime compared to some of the military's tankers, which date to the 1950s.

But because of the intensity of wartime operations, the C-17 fleet will more quickly experience maintenance and other costs that come with any hard-run piece of machinery, according to Air Force officials and executives with Boeing, the plane's manufacturer.

"Usually what happens is that the maintenance becomes so high that you make the decision to mothball it or start over with a new plane," said John Cook, Boeing's director of C-17 field services in Charleston. "That's what we saw with the C-141 (cargo jet). It had old technology; it cost too much to upgrade the system, so pretty soon you say, 'Let's start over.' It's almost the same decision you make with your car."

In Iraq and Afghanistan, C-17s have become an increasingly important part of the military's supply chain. As insurgents attacked land-based convoys with improvised explosive devices, the military began moving people and supplies by air. In 2006, this shift took some 9,000 personnel a month off Iraqi roads.

During this time, the rate of C-17 landings and takeoffs was almost three times what military leaders planned for the planes. "The wear and tear on the C-17s is very real. It is the wartime use that really got us," Air Force Gen. Duncan J. McNabb told reporters then.

The oldest planes in the C-17 fleet, such as the Spirit of Charleston, have notched nearly 15,000 hours in the air and more than 9,900 landings.

But "some hours are more taxing than others," Cook said.

Pilots regularly fly C-17s crammed with heavy equipment and cargo, which puts more stress on wings. To extend their ranges, jets made before 2001 are getting new fuel tanks in their wings, which adds weight and stress during landings. Landing on short runways puts pressure on engines, particularly when pilots crank up the thrust reversers, essentially their brakes.

"Flying like this will certainly take a toll on an aircraft, just like driving your car 18,000 miles a year versus 12,000 miles a year will require more maintenance," said Norman L. Moore Jr., a civilian deputy in charge of C-17 maintenance at Charleston Air Force Base.

But with proper maintenance, the C-17's lifespan could easily exceed 30,000 hours, he said, adding that the Air Force didn't retire its C-141 cargo jets until they racked up 45,000 hours.

Planes well maintained

Moore, whose civilian and military career spans more than three decades, is known around the base for driving "the Gladiator," a 1995 Chevy Van with more than 235,000 miles. It reflects his philosophy about how regular maintenance can keep a machine going past its prime.

With each C-17 costing about $200 million, the Air Force has an extensive regular regimen to keep these planes in top condition.

Charleston Air Force Base has 51 C-17s, and every 120 days, each one gets what's known as a "home station check," essentially a tune-up on steroids.

During these inspections, crews check the plane's computers and study feedback from pilots. Then they crawl over the plane for three days, changing its massive tires and looking for cracks, bad rivets and other potential problems.

During a home station check earlier this year, C-17 technician Jamey Elms said the program is about more than just numbers and calendar dates. There's also a team dynamic at play and mechanics don't want to let the pilots down, he said. "If they go up there to start that engine and there's a fault, that gives us a black eye," he said.

Engineers also monitor the temperatures of each engine's exhaust; if the temperature rises to a certain point, crews replace the entire engine.

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Once every three years, the birds get an even more thorough inspection, along with upgrades that bring older planes up to the same level as ones coming off Boeing's assembly line in Long Beach, Calif.

In the past year, the Air Force also has reduced flying hours by using simulators instead of actual planes for training.

Moore said the Air Force also tries to rotate C-17s from high-use to lower-use bases. That helps extend the life of the entire fleet and was one of the reasons the Air Force was able to keep its C-141s flying for 40 years.

"Aircraft maintenance is not a profession for me. It's a passion," said Moore, who chokes up as he talks about how crews work long hours in intense heat and cold.

"I see that airplane being around a long time," he said.

More planes needed?

The plane's relative youth, along with its maintenance regimen, has made it one of the Air Force's most reliable cargo planes. Its "mission capable rate," an important measure of reliability and readiness, recently was 87.5 percent, higher than any other Air Force cargo jet.

But the most important statistic is that not a single C-17 has been lost, either through malfunction, pilot error or enemy weapons fire.

The military plans to buy another 31 C-17s, with the last one scheduled for delivery in two years.

It's unclear what will happen next, though the answer will involve billions of tax dollars.

Pentagon planners are studying the military's air transport requirements, but a report in November by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, criticized the military's accounting and projections, saying it underestimated the $9.1 billion price tag to upgrade the Air Force's C-5 cargo jets, some of which are more than 30 years old.

Meanwhile, shutting down the C-17 production line carries its own costs, the GAO said in its report. "Clarity is needed before committing additional billions of dollars to C-5 modernization programs, establishing C-5 retirement schedules, and/or acquiring additional C-17 aircraft," it said.

Loren B. Thompson, a military expert with the Lexington Institute, a top think tank, recently told an Air Force Association conference that the military probably needs another 200 C-17s because of the aging C-5 fleet and other demands.

"In the future, military historians will look back wistfully at the Bush era in terms of what might have been, and wonder where all the money went," Thompson told the group, referring also to troubles with aging Cold War bombers and other weapons systems. "It certainly didn't go into a focused program for preserving America's global air dominance."

Reach Tony Bartelme at 937-5554 or tbartelme@postandcourier.com. Reach Ron Menchaca at 937-5724 or rmenchaca@postandcourier.com.