WAFP

This happened about 8 months ago.

Took off in Fred to fly to CHS to pick up cargo. We RON at CHS and woke up the next morning to find out that three 747s came in and emptied CHS of ALL its cargo. Well the ATOC guys didn't have anything for us so we were told to fly to Dover. Got there, picked up 30 pallets and then flew to Ramstein. Landed and found out that our downrange run had been cancelled. We asked to stay in the system to haul more cargo, but nope, TACC wanted us to fly home empty.

27 hours of flying time for only 100k in cargo delivered. I'm sure there have been worse, but coming from the C-21 to Fred, this was eye opening.

Clue32

I had a similar one to add in Army waste, although being a C-12 it didn't waste quite as much money. Had a mission to pick up a four man (enlisted) security detail from Kuwiat to take 'em home to Wiesbaden. Flew empty to Turkey to RON, saw two of my pax when I was checking into lodging (they went home via USAPAT G III), flew empty to Kuwait only to find out a third was taking a direct (Medivac) flight to Ramstein, and hit my latest departure time (for crew endurance duty day) before the fourth could make it down into Kuwait (he came home on airforce transportation too). Flew back to Turkey to RON, then flew home the next day.

Two nights in lodging for two pilots and 20 hours worth of jet fuel just so we could fly our Flight Crew Lunches and zero passengers around a combat theater.

Don't forget about the one star in Grafenwoehr who's time is too important drive forty minutes to the Nurenberg Airport so he takes one of his personal UH-60s to meet his C-12 flight.

Or going out to the range with three times the amount of ammo you need and wasting it just because it is easier to turn in brass then the paperwork hassel involved with turning rounds back in.

Vandal

Forget the plasma screens in weather, how about Weather itself!! Completely useless as long as there is internet access. They go to 5-6 websites and write your -1 in 10x the time it would take me to print the data out myself.

Speaking of waste, just flew a crew of 8 in the Herk from Pittsburgh to Miramar (RON), Miramar to McChord to Eielson (RON), back to McChord (RON) then back to Pittsburgh. Cargo? 6 Pallets Miramar-Eielson. 26 hours of flying.

Oh and another one from the Herk world, Aeromed training missions! We take off for 2-4 hours and fly in a circle so the Aeromeds can do all their checklists in the back of the airplane. What part of that requires actual flight/engines running is beyond me.

Oh well it's a paycheck I shouldn't complain I guess...

Vandal

Woah you mean you have to take the course before you actually take the course?

VQ2 Spanky

EP-3E with 60,000 lbs of fuel on September 30th. MO informs me to not come back untill there is 8k remaining on a three hour mission. So dumped 15K after passing 6k and flew the mission with gear and flaps down. 4 hours later landed four hours later with 10K. Got bored flying at 155 knots all day.

Oh by the way, I have been twice FOSd and the Skipper at the time made O-6 and is the CO of a base now. Go figure! Maybe I should have landed with 8K

Today the saying still goes "If you don't spend it you won't get it next year"
In my house if you don't spend it you still have it. Better philosophy I say.

Tweetdrvr

Yes, it seems to be a common theme on AD, the way rated guys screw each other is you have to go in residence to be on the fast track. Not that big of a deal on overall promotion rates to have it done only by correspondance when going from O-3 to O-4, but going in residence to both SOS and ACSC seems to be the way to be on the Squadron CC track and higher. When a commander is racking and stacking his dudes for the few coveted in residence school slots, the ones who have shown their loyalty and commitment to the team by having done it by correspondance are the ones chosen to go do it again at MXF. From talking with people who have done SOS in residence, it seems most of the non flyers are studying it for the first time. Maybe this is because there are only so many slots to give out, and outside of a flying unit, there are not that many places where you have such a large congregation of officers, so it is easier for them to go in residence. Doesn't make it right, but that is the way it is.

Fortunately the ANG/Reserve realize that most traditional guardsmen/reservists have jobs and lives and the squadrons don't play those games. One good thing about the system is it allows you to accomplish it by correspondance in case you get a job, then later down the road, if you need paydays because you don't have a job, you can apply to go in residence and get reasonable amount of MPA/School days and per diem.

I just hope, as the reserves start to mirror the active duty and look at advanced degrees, the majority of dudes up for promotion will not have masters degrees and therefore we will still all get promoted. It seems the sooner one separates from AD, the less likely one is to have an advanced degree. For those of us who leave at O-3 level, we seem to bum/trough for a bit, then either currry enough favor for an ART/Tech/AGR slot or move to the commercial side of flying. Flying an airline schedule and flying in the ANG/Reserve make it hard enough to accomplish the advanced PME by correspondance, let alone attend masters classes.

III Corps

In '72 we launched for the Purple North out of Utapao, Thailand. No one told the tankers the wx in the targets was crumped or that the strike and the fighters had been canxed. So we were told to 'adjust landing gross weight'. We couldn't use the term 'dump fuel' as even then it was not politically acceptable.

Reportedly, the tankers dumped 1.6 million lbs of fuel and when the last wave of tankers were on final back to the Thai bases, 7th called and said the strike was back on... re-generate the tankers as soon as possible.

But then, we did our pattern work in the ConUS with flaps 30 and gear down because we didn't want to wear the systems out. The BUFFS flew patterns with flaps and gear extended also.

Good to see some things don't change

L'il J.Seinfeld

From 2003 through 2005 the 22d Operations Group had a female Lt Col that became infamous. This piece o' work used to scream at people walking during the 22 OG PT runs on Fridays. Often times the people she screamed at would retort "Ma'am, I'm not part of your PT run and am not even in the 22 Ops Group." She was such a tool.

To make matters worse they made her the ADO and for a period the DO of the 22 Operations Support Squadron. What makes this odd is that she was a Finance Officer. Yes, that's right, they put a Finance officer in charge of the flying schedule, flight training, wx, base ops etc. She understood some of the basics like crew rest, but exposed her ignorance to flying ops on a daily basis. One time she was upset with me because we cancelled a sortie for lack of an IP. She thought she was catching me in a lie and pulled up my schedule as I was an IP and did not fly that day. When she confronted me with it in front of 5-10 people she blushed red when I said I wasn't available because I was the IP of the day and not allowed to fly per the memo she had sent out. Watching her losing battles with the associate Reserve Squadron was the only thing that kept our morale out of the toiled. I will always have a debt of gratitude to R. Brink and the officers of the 18 ARS for putting that wicked woman in her place.

It's wasteful because the USAF flushed away the morale of a Wing of troops who were deploying left and right for the "career broadening" of a careerist who could not care less about the welfar of the unit.

WAFP

Got another one, not really flying related.

My previous sq had a real tool (with a capitol T) for a commander. Our budget for the year had pretty much ran out, minus around $500. We were not paying people for TDYs or even getting new flight suits, but this guy, in his ultimate wisdom, thought this would be a good idea...

We were getting ready for an exercise and so the sq memebers participating in the exercise looked the part, he ordered our sq RA to use the last $500 to buy NAME TAGS for everyone's deployment bags!!!

Yep, six people did the exercise "deployment" and each had their own personalized, engraved nametags!

Thank, whatever you pray to, that he is retiring this year! The AF is better off.

GunshipGuy

Air Force and waste? Don't those two go hand in hand? After 20 years you become so indoctrinated in how to waste tax payer money that it's difficult to point out examples. So help me out, does this sound like waste or just a good use of resources?

Maintenance at Hurlburt pretty much rules the roost. If Mx says you can only fly a 12 hour flying window then, by God it's a 12 hour flying window. In fact, for a while there mx said they'd do a better job if they only had to have planes available for ops 4 out of 7 days of the week. Got 5 tails available to fly? Sorry, our contract says we're only going to let you fly 3 of 'em. Otherwise it's too much a burden on mx. So it probably won't come as a surprise that the following decision wasn't even questioned in regard to wasted funds. When the training of new crew members for gunships was behind to the point that something significant had to be done the decision was made to fly on the weekends. But guess what; mx couldn't be imposed upon. So in their infinite wisdom the group decided that gunships from Hurlburt would fly their training mission (i.e. go shoot on the local ranges just 6 miles west of the base and do a dry fire mission within 60 miles of the base) and then recover to MacDill (270 NM east of HRT) on Friday night; then on Sat fly from MacDill to Hurlburt, shoot on the ranges, do the dry fire, and recover to MacDill again, then on Sunday, fly to Hurlburt and after another training mission, this time, amazingly, recover to Hurlburt. Thus, mx was inconvenienced with having to come out to the base on Sun and recover the aircraft (oh, the horror!). This happened on numerous occasions; it may still be taking place. Extra fuel, per diem, lodging, etc. Standard ops for the AF.