![]() ![]() There were so many aircraft landing at the air base that it caused a traffic jam in the sky, with planes like Reach 651 having to hold in the air “for as long as possible,” according to Capt. The conditions and the cultural differences came to a boiling point when Reach 651 arrived in the airspace over Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar. “As a female crew member, I also was not treated very well, and it’s again a cultural difference.” A view inside an Air Force C-17 transporting Afghan evacuees during Operation Allies Refuge. “It was a struggle to have our interpreter respected or even heard,” she said. ![]() While there was an interpreter aboard Reach 651, Heiser said she did not have the best grasp of English, and the passengers did not take her seriously because she was a woman. A massive cultural and linguistic gap between the airmen and their passengers made the situation even more difficult. The comparison to commercial airliners, which many Americans already find a stressful experience, is meant to highlight the challenges both evacuees and airmen faced during OAR. Get the latest military news, entertainment, and gear in your inbox daily. “Most jets only had one bathroom so some people used the cargo floor,” one C-17 pilot told Task & Purpose shortly after OAR. However, unlike commercial airliners, there were no seats for evacuees aboard the C-17, no individual air conditioning vents and only one small lavatory at the nose end of the compartment. There were more than 450 passengers onboard, including dozens of parent-less children.įor perspective, the C-17 cargo compartment has about 1,584 square feet of space, which meant each passenger had less than 3.5-square-feet of space: about 2-square-feet fewer than what passengers can expect in economy seating aboard many commercial airliners, according to the Michigan Journal of Economics. During OAR, airmen laid down a tarp on the cargo deck for evacuees to sit down on and hold onto cargo straps that Heiser and Williams had laid out in rows across the deck. The ravens and other aircrew searched the evacuees, who were then guided to their places on the cargo bay deck by the loadmasters, Heiser and Senior Airman Matthew Williams. E-Quantay Mason and Airman 1st Class Jeremy Eda were “ ravens,” the term for security forces airmen (the Air Force equivalent of military police) who undergo special training to provide security on Air Force aircraft. In response, the airmen aboard Reach 651 followed procedure by searching every evacuee prior to boarding. The security situation was tenuous: intelligence analysts warned the aircrew that there could be an imminent attack on the airfield at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, possibly in the form of suicide bombers. military aircraft during Operation Allies Refuge, Aug. Reach 651 was among more than a hundred other C-17 crews charged with moving the evacuees, often by squeezing 450 or more people on each flight. Heiser and the seven other airmen aboard Reach 651 received the Distinguished Flying Cross at Travis Air Force Base, California on Friday for their efforts during the operation. military effort to evacuate more than 124,000 people out of Kabul, Afghanistan during the last days of the United States’ longest war there. It was in the middle of Operation Allies Refuge (OAR), the massive U.S. “It is completely against protocol,” Senior Airman Kimberly Heiser told Task & Purpose about what she and her crew had to do that day. The crew of the Air Force C-17 transport jet callsign Reach 651 found themselves in such circumstances while in the air over Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar on Aug. But in extraordinary circumstances, sometimes the safety regs must be put aside in order to accomplish the mission. Many airmen are familiar with the saying “regulations are written in blood,” which reminds them to follow safety regulations or suffer the consequences. 22, 2021 (Senior Airman Brennen Lege/U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III in support of Operation Allies Refuge at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), Afghanistan, Aug. Air Force security forces raven, assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, assists qualified evacuees boarding a U.S. ![]()
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