27 Apr

This seems to be somewhat of a routine. Once again I was supposed to fly and once again we have what is now the worst dust storm of the year. It’s too bad because it would have been a good mission with good crews flying it. I was able to get a test flight in before the dust rolled in around noon. I ended up coming back to the room after lunch since nothing was moving at work and as this is supposed to last for several days I have decided to take tomorrow off. It has been a couple of weeks so it will be nice to sleep in. Aircraft 174 is the other big happening around here in the last week. They managed to land a few feet short of the pad at a FOB near here. Everyone was fine but they hit just right to collapse both aft landing gear. It took a few days to get everything together and come up with a plan. Four days ago they got a crane on site to lift the back end up, remove the damaged landing gear and set it on pallets. Then Brian and J.R. flew it back here and landed on another set of pallets (we are getting way too much practice at that). It is going to be down for a little bit but there wasn’t any major structural damage so it will be back flying. In other news we got three new pilots in from Alaska a couple of days ago. They are replacements that were requested back in September after 171 crashed and CPT Pyun left. At least they made it before the end.
Dust H 93 L 75