Maintaining ground power

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Blake Gonzales
  • 355th Wing Public Affairs

When an aircraft leaves the flight line, its performance depends on the effort of several maintainers.

Behind the line of Airmen ensuring every aircraft is performance-ready, there is another group of Airmen directly supporting their mission through the equipment they use.

The 355th Equipment Maintenance Squadron’s Aerospace Ground Equipment flight maintains, inspects and supports ground equipment for Davis-Monthan’s flight line. This includes everything from floodlights for maintainers on night-shift to generators supplying power to aircraft.

“We support any and all aircraft that come to Davis-Monthan and need AGE,” said U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jacob Jervell, 355th EMS AGE technician. “Without AGE, you lose all the support that the aircraft gets on the ground. It’s vital.”

The flight troubleshoots, repairs and maintains all equipment it is assigned, and performs more than 900 inspections yearly. During in flight line operations, it is important for AGE to be readily available and operational.

“I make sure everything is working properly before we send it to the flight line,” said Senior Airman Andrea Sabillon, 355th EMS AGE technician. “We work on pretty much anything that crew chiefs and maintainers on the flight line use to do their job.”

Behind every delivery, whether a B-1 maintenance platform or corrosion cart, there is an assigned technician fixing problems or completing inspections to ensure proper performance.

“Crew chiefs and maintainers need our equipment to do their job,” said Sabillon. “There’s no airpower without ground power.”

There is a maintainer behind every working aircraft, and by aiding them, AGE technicians ensure Davis-Monthan’s aircraft are ready to perform the mission at a moment’s notice anywhere in the world.