Military Charter Loadmaster Experiences

A good article written by Phil Derner Jr.

The High Risk Job of a Military Charter Loadmaster

My Commentary

I look back at my days of doing this and it would be considered brutal by many.  I would start working a flight on Monday morning with a few hours of reconfiguring the decks for military cargo.  Once that was done, I would board the flight on Monday afternoon and head over to the east coast, getting there on Monday evening, wait in line to get my first load from the Air Force, which is never in much of a hurry to do anything.  There was always quite a bit of hurry up and wait in this line of work.  Take care of all the particulars for the trip like loading, fueling, maintenance, paperwork, etc., get the flight ready to depart then leave LATE on Monday night which was actually early Tuesday morning.

After several hours in the air, we would get to Germany on Tuesday afternoon for more waiting in line....Get your cross load, make sure it was correct and in good shape, load it up, get the fuel done and all the other particulars, All had to be done, hope there was no maintenance issue and get wheels up by 10pm or risk curfew.  Pretty often there was a back log of planes on the ramp in KWI, so you got held up in Ramstein for a spot to open up on the ramp at Kuwait City, that was the biggest threat to departure time.  Several more hours of flying,  Every Tuesday night, passing over over Baghdad was a bit wierd, but you got used to it.

Flying south over Iraq to Kuwait, getting there early weds morning was the routine.  First thing to do there was to unload, which was quick.  Getting the load before the sun comes up and the temps hit 120 degrees .... good luck with that as you again have to ...wait in line.  Ku-WAIT was a saying in those parts of the world.  Once you got the load, check it out, get it loaded, fueled, etc was the norm, but what made it hard was the fact that we took back the "Angels"  each week.  It was hard to take part in loading the flag draped caskets and not get emotional.

Take off Weds late morning and get back to Germany Weds afternoon.  Hey and guess what you get to do....wait in line some more to get a small cross load.   The Good news was that you actually have a couple hours to grab a shower in a public shower room.  Do all the usual particulars again, then take off from there Late Wed evening (hopefully before 10pm) and get back to the east coast Thurs afternoon.  This was the slowest part of the trip.  Again, you have to wait in line....then you have to do the ceremonies for the Angels on board.  This took quite some time because there was a ceremony for each casket and you sometimes had multiple Angels.  Once that is complete, you do your offload.  Take off from there late Thursday night, get back on Friday Morning and reconfigure the deck back to a civilian format and you are done about 7am.

That was my work week and did you notice there was no mention of a hotel in there.  I slept in a seat or mat on the floor of the aircraft while in the air, in between flight segments and time zones, never really knowing what day or what time it was since we lived on "Zulu" time.  I ate airplane food for 3 meals a day, unless there was a few minutes and someone could run to the base Burger King for me at Ramstein, and I did this every week.

Toss in a maintenance problem or back log of aircraft in the middle east or a missed curfew and it easily rolled over into Saturday.  The whole time I was doing everything, everything necessary to make that aircraft airworthy and legal to fly, fueling included!

You have to be on your A game the whole time, every detail has to be seen, nothing can be missed or bad things happen.  You master the load, managing a bunch of 19 year olds who know very little about air cargo as a whole and watching everything they did, checking and double checking.    It was a great gig, but exhausting.  I do miss it though!

That was the glamorous live of a loadmaster for Northwest Airlines.  The referenced article is a really good article and it touched a nerve with me, because I did this for a couple years.

I was actually part of the crew, but as the article stated and as I illustrated in my above rant, I had no protections as a crew member would.  As soon as we landed, I hit the road running.  However, I do have to say, Northwest Airlines did take great care of us and in no way ever took advantage of us nor did I ever feel abused.  BUT....yes, I slept on the plane in flight, ate junk, cleaned with baby wipes and all that other stuff.  Not until later, after we started burning out did we get authorization to rotate around to get a night in a hotel in either Ramstein or Incerlik.  I would never trade in my days as an NWA loadmaster!  The details of WHAT we did are just as interesting as the environment we did it in, as I explained earlier in this post.

We were met by our local Ground Service Coordinator at every stop, which was often a local vendor we contracted with to provide local liaison at the remote airfields we visited.  This began the work, reviewing the paperwork for the next flight, checking the load plans, planned haz mat, time line, etc.  At this point, it was a waiting game, depending on who all was in line ahead of us.

The on/off loads were interesting.  Generally we got a team of military airmen most between 18 and 20 years old, with very little experience.  I had to be in two places at once to supervise the entire load.  Occasionally an NCO or SNCO would pop in to check on them, but for the most part, I had to check and double check everything they did.

To begin with, the loaders the AF uses are not designed to fit with commercial freighters, so getting them to align to the door took an experienced driver and a keen eye on the loadmaster hanging out of the cargo door two stories up.  This was the greatest challenge of the day as the drivers were often "new".  Once we started, the next set of challenges hit the door, like, pallets would come in the door that were either wrong pallets, wrong weights, undeclared or improperly declared haz mat, poorly built/secured and I had to reject them or move them around in the load and coordinate with load planning.

Often the GSC was trying to learn the craft of being a load master, so he was often close at hand and very helpful.  We always had to check the lockdown of each and every pallet to ensure it was done right, pretty often I would find problems.  The problem is that military pallets and commercial freighters don't fit perfectly together, so you have to be very creative on loading to ensure total safety and legality.

Large roll on stock, requires a great deal of knowledge to load and my experience tells me that many of the "loadmasters" I encountered didn't really have that kind of experience.  I learned as an Embarkation Specialist (0431) in the Marine Corps, loading Helos and other Heavy Equipment or Motor T assets into military aircraft.  I loaded many C5s, C141s, C130s and even special ops Ch-53s with cargo.

Now, while all this is going on, you have to coordinate with the fuelers or even fuel the aircraft yourself, if there were no fuelers available, ensure catering is done, ensure all the paperwork is correct and the crews have been called out and picked up in time for an on-time departure.  It was generally an incredible hard and fast paced 2 or 3 hours followed up by a lot of sit around and wait.

So all this being said, imaging doing this after sleeping in a chair for say 10 out of the last 48 hours, eating crappy food and being in extreme weather conditions like 100 degree heat in the middle east after working in 20 degree weather on the east coast and 50 degree weather in Germany.  Toss in snow, rain or a massive dust storm and you have a fun time.

There is no room for error.  Mistakes in this job can have catastrophic results as the article points out, but to blame the loadmaster straight out is harsh as no one knows the circumstances surrounding the event.  However, no matter what, it is the loadmasters job to ensure that everything done to that plane is perfect, so the buck stops there.  The Loadmaster is the commander of that aircraft while it is on the ground until the release is signed by the Captain taking custody of the aircraft.  The issue is clear, the LoadMaster is a job just as important as the flight crew, yet in commercial aviation, there is no regulation governing the training or work times for anyone in this position.  Yet, in the military, there is.  Hmmm.... see a problem?

Loadmasters are a special breed of people who work absolutely insane hours in the most insane environments and they love it.  What we considered a good week, most nine to fivers would think were grounds for quitting.  Murphy's Law ruled the day and the word "easy" was looked on with skepticism.  But I wouldn't trade the experience in for the world, and for the right dollar, I might take it back up!