Friday, June 11, 2010

Fullbore Friday

Chaos - yea, we can do that.
Time magazine editors have named Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Antonio D. Travis to the 2010 Time 100, the magazine's annual list of the 100 most-influential people in the world, for his efforts after the Haiti earthquake.

Travis was one of the first U.S. military members on the ground at the Toussaint L'Ouverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, only 30 hours after the Jan. 12 earthquake and less than 12 hours after the nation's president requested U.S. assistance. The chief led a team of special tactics airmen from the 23rd, 21st and 123rd special tactics squadrons.

With his team of combat veterans, Travis led the largest single-runway operation in history, using hand-held radios to control thousands of aircraft. Their air traffic control tower was a card table set up next to the airport's runway.

"Twenty-eight minutes after touchdown, we controlled the first air landing followed immediately by a departure, and we did not slow down for the next 12 days," said Travis, who hails from Nelson County, Ky.

After establishing control of the airfield there, his team orchestrated an orderly flow for incoming aircraft and dealt with the constraints of the inadequate airfield, which potentially could have limited relief operations.

Facing 42 aircraft jammed into a parking ramp designed to accommodate 10 large planes and untangling the gridlock was the first of many seemingly insurmountable challenges necessary to facilitate the flood of inbound relief flights.

In the dawn of the U.S. response to the Haitian crisis, Travis coordinated with Miami-based Federal Aviation Administration officials via text messaging on his BlackBerry. His ingenuity paid massive dividends as priority aircraft transited the small airport, delivering lifesaving water, food and medical supplies in support of the U.S. Agency for International Development-led international humanitarian effort.

From chaos, Travis established order as his combat controllers reduced a four-hour hold time in the air on Day 1 to less than two hours on Day 2 and less than 15 minutes by Day 3.

For 12 days, 24-hours-a-day, the airfield team ran the international airport in Port-au-Prince. Together with more than 200 other airmen from Hurlburt Field, Fla., they tirelessly ensured the safe and effective control of more than 4,000 takeoffs and landings, an average of one aircraft operation every five minutes, and enabled the delivery of 4 million pounds of humanitarian relief to the people of Haiti.

Without computers or electricity, Travis and his team controlled as many as 250 aircraft daily, exceeding the normal capacity of the airfield by 1,400 percent without a single incident. By Jan. 25, his team was able to hand operations over to Air Force air traffic controllers with a portable control tower.
THAT is the America I know. Not bad for an Air Force guy; I bet he built a 3-par golf course too.

31 comments:

  1. Byron07:36

    BZ, CMS Travis and your team!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Grandpa Bluewater07:43

    The best of the Air Force NCO's are as good as anyone on the planet.
    BZ to the Chief and his band of merry airmen.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Salty Gator08:01

    Definitely Fullbore.  Can you imagine that.....15 minute hold times?  You can't get that going into Philadelphia International Airport and that has similar traffic, a ton of computers, and a bunch of FAA civillians manning the tower.  Goes to show that when it comes to being high speed, USAF Special Tactics (Para Rescue and Combat Controllers) are some of the best there is.
    This article neglected to mention that the rest of the world was crying that the USAF guys were giving "priority" to actual "priority" flights and not celebrities, UN pussies and Ze French.

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  4. AW1 Tim08:04

    BZ indeed! Well done, shipmate. That's been my appreciation of most military folks. Just tell them what needs to be, when it needs to be done by, and then please sir, grab a cup of coffee and stand over there.  :)

      God Bless em all.

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  5. PCSSEPA08:33

    SH  CDR for getting this out there.  SH to CMS Travis and his team.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Curtis09:36

    Oh crap.  The Air Force dispatches NCOs in charge right up there often as the SEALS do.  The USAF is the least likely service on earth to dispatch an NCOIC.

    ReplyDelete
  7. ewok40k10:39

    As Jabba would say: My kind of scum, resourceful and fearless...
    Countless lives were saved by those people, but lets not forget the Navy was doing the real heavy lift... restoring the port facilities was a feat on a par with Seabees at Henderson Field.

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  8. Brian10:53

    Quiet professionals - that's the true American spirit.

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  9. Old NFO12:03

    Resourcefulness and ingenuity have long been the strongest asset of the US military.  Other countries soldiers can follow orders.  The US military takes stock of the situation and gets the job done.  I've seen it at the lowest levels of leadership.  E-4's and E-5's taking charge and getting the job done if higher levels let the side down. 

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  10. Kristen12:24

    The senior sgts across the U.S. military are among the most competent men on earth.  I'd trust them to get any job done.

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  11. DeltaBravo12:45

    Is there a place for this man as head of the FAA, or maybe the head of the Red Cross?  Aww, hell... put him in the White House.  He can't do worse than the current occupant at disaster management.

    ReplyDelete
  12. xformed15:20

    As a first step, send him to the Gulf and tell ADM Allen a real problem solver is in town....

    I'm sure we'd find out what duct tape and sheer determination could do....

    Later step...yeah...WH.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Grumpy Old Ham17:56

    Yep, all you guys that rail against us "Chair Force" types ought to spend a little time with the Combat Control and PJ crowd... ;)

    Well, done, Chief!

    ReplyDelete
  14. UltimaRatioRegis18:25

    "<span>restoring the port facilities was a feat on a par with Seabees at Henderson Field."</span>

    Er, no.  No malaria, no Bettys or Zeroes, and no IJN running down the Slot to bombard the port facilities with 8" and 14" naval gunfire. 

    Hell of a job, no question.  But not on par with Henderson.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Redeye8000:27

    Hopefully, we picked up on the lessons learned here.  We may have the best technology in the world but with no electrcity, we need to ability to operate with a stop watch and a clip board.  Compass and a map. Or maybe an old fashioned Maneuvering Board.

    I am surprised the MSM picked on this story.

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  16. ewok40k01:12

    In terms of combat danger youre right, but in terms of engineering difficulty its equal feat.

    ReplyDelete
  17. USAF Mike03:11

    light nitpick...in the USAF, it's "CMSgt" or, more commonly (as GOH stated), just "Chief." 

    Also, like GOH said, don't think these folks are the type to be interested in golf courses...the AFSOC guys are a different breed.  They're too busy going to interesting parts of the world and doing interesting things.

    Finally, surprised none of you guys picked up on this...the Chief is a Marine!  He was in the Marine Corps for 7 years before he jumped ship to the AF to specifically be a CCT.

    ReplyDelete
  18. butch09:18

    Re golf course: Lighten up, Francis!

    ReplyDelete
  19. SNAnonymous11:49

    CCT:  one of the most overlooked Spec Ops communities.  I didn't know much about them until I had a guy (who later became a -60 pilot) in my API class who was a prior Air Guard CCT.  These guys do some amazing stuff.

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  20. Casey Tompkins15:58

    I was going to post a stand-alone comment on this, but Redeye handed me a straight line. :)

    The story as written said "Without computers or electricity, Travis and his team controlled as many as 250 aircraft daily." Um, no. Unless you can convince me that hand-held radios and Blackberries don't use batteries (a form of electricity). Not to mention a modern Blackberry is arguably a hand-held computer.

    What the Chief and his men did was nothing short of amazing, but the article writer went a bit over the top with that line.

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  21. SES position at FEMA?

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  22. The other issue, not mentioned, is that they were providing thier own security - no doubt there were some locals who needed to be "controlled" by the CCTs...

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  23. Kevin21:44

    Hopefully he got something more than a COM.  An MSM+ sounds appropriate.

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  24. ShawnP12:37

    His performance has nothing to do with being a Marine. It's because he hails from the greatest Commonwealth in the country. Also home to yours truly and modesty is not a virtue I choose to participate in.

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  25. UltimaRatioRegis13:02

    If by "his" you mean Chief MSgt Travis, you are correct.  He is a Air Force dude. 

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  26. USAF Mike17:37

    See my comment below...the Chief did 7 years in the Marine Corps before transferring to the AF to be a CCT.

    ReplyDelete
  27. UltimaRatioRegis21:58

    Wow, that means ShawnP is NOT correct!  Of COURSE his being a Marine was critical to his success!

    ReplyDelete
  28. Grumpy Old Ham18:32

    Courtesy of the link to Greyhawk re: Mr. Yon, I found a fullbore story about the PJ part of the CCT/PJ world:

    http://www.mudvillegazette.com/033730.html

    Some of the follow-on links from there tell pretty amazing stories, too.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Anonymous13:41

    Wow, can't believe I have not seen this site until now. It was a Joint effort combining all members of DoD and OGA's. Definately could not have pulled off without the USS Carl Vinson support, the 22 and 24 MEU, 82nd Airborne just to name a few. Bottom line, credit was given for the hard work of the sled dogs working 18 + hour days. Mike is right, 7.5 years as a Jarhead at Talega and French Creek

    ReplyDelete
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