Pegasus maintainers off to strong start

  • Published
  • By Daryl Mayer, AFLCMC Public Affairs
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB, Ohio (AFLCMC) – The KC-46 Pegasus Tanker Sustainment Team completed its first year of organic 1C-Checks at Tinker AFB, Oklahoma producing 23 of 23 aircraft ahead of Depot schedule.
 
Col. Leigh Ottati, KC-46 Division Chief and Jody LeBlanc, Depot Activation and Sustainment team lead, joined for an episode of AFLCMC’s Leadership Log podcast to share their experiences in launching this sustainment effort. 
 

“It is commercial derivative and so it's built on Boeing's production line,” said Ottati.  “But we, the Air Force, are responsible for the maintenance and the sustainment of it.  All those challenges came into the depot activation challenges that Jody [LeBlanc] and his phenomenal team down at Tinker have been tackling over the last few years.  That all came to fruition last fiscal year when we had the first opportunity to do ‘C’ checks on the earliest aircraft that were delivered back in 2019.”
 
Those checks are an aircraft inspection similar to commercial maintenance processes that airlines perform.  Less invasive than the traditional Programmed Depot Maintenance, C-checks are done every two years and involves service and lube, equivalent to an oil change, visual inspections looking for damage and defects, operational checks to ensure primary and backup systems are functioning properly and washing the aircraft.
 
“This was really a big deal for the Air Force,” LeBlanc said.  “This is the first commercial derivative aircraft that is FAA certified that is going to be maintained organically by the Air Force.”    
 
Historically, maintenance would be handled under contractor logistic support, but early in the Pegasus acquisition leaders decided on a different path.
 
“The challenge here was let's break that paradigm, let's look at how do we organically maintain this FAA certified aircraft.  Jody and the team worked through a lot of challenges for the first C-checks and the challenges will just continue as we progress into fully organic sustainment,” Ottati said.       
 
The organic effort will require an enterprise-wide initiative. 
 
“One entity could not do it, so we have a lot of partners in this,” LeBlanc said.  “DLA is one of our supply chain partners, the 848th Supply Chain is our other partner as far as supply goes.  We're also working with all three depots, Warner Robins, Ogden and Tinker, so they are a big piece of this as those three depot are the ones that are going to maintain the aircraft.” 
 
To hear the full conversation, you can watch Leadership Log on YouTube at https://youtu.be/OSV4FooJbdQ.  You can also listen by searching “Leadership Log” on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, Overcast, Radio Public or Breaker.