Quality Assurance eyes, ears ensure mission success

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Micaiah Anthony
  • 100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
RAF MILDENHALL, England --  Getting 322,500 pounds of metal, fuel and cargo off of the ground is no easy task. It is a feat that requires Airmen from various maintenance sections to work together. Airmen toil day and night following step-by-step instructions to ensure the aircraft functions properly and the crew returns home safely. In this fast-paced profession safety is the primary concern.

In order to ensure maintainers and aircraft are safe, the 100th Maintenance Group relies on its Quality Assurance Section. 

"Safety is number one," exclaimed Staff Sgt. Karl Asuncion, 100th MXG jets quality assurance inspector. "We want to see how things are being done and how they can be improved. We keep track of the inspections and trend items so we can avoid the same issues the next time around."

Findings are logged in a program called Mustang, which is a web based system that is used to track inspection history. The findings are relayed up the chain of command once they are logged.

"We are the eyes and ears of the maintenance group commander," said Tech. Sgt. James Wells 100th MXG KC-135 Stratotanker crew chief quality assurance inspector. "We inspect maintenance that has been recently completed, ongoing maintenance and past maintenance events to ensure they were done safely and correctly."

At the beginning of each shift, quality assurance inspectors conduct turnover with the outgoing shift's quality assurance inspectors. The Airmen pass on vital information pertaining to what maintenance has been completed and what maintenance is projected.

"We try to build our day off of what predicted maintenance will be happening," Asuncion said. "There are general inspections on facilities and support sections. It's not necessarily just inspections of the people on the flightline but we go to the back shops and the people performing the other duties that are vital to the flightline."

Throughout the day, inspectors conduct three types of inspections; personnel evaluations, quality verification inspections and special inspections.

Personnel evaluations are conducted to monitor the maintainers' ability to conduct specific maintenance tasks while following technical orders and safety standards. 

"To start we tell them exactly what we are going to inspect, what the criteria for a pass or fail rating is and how many minor findings we are allowed to see before we deem the inspection a fail," Asuncion said. "We will follow them through a task, ask a few questions to test their knowledge and at the end of the evaluation we will brief any discrepancies or areas of improvement. We also address any recent changes to technical orders that might be applicable to them."

Quality verification inspections are conducted to check completed maintenance to ensure the correct documentation was performed and to verify that the maintenance was accomplished on the aircraft.

"Special inspections range from document to vehicle inspections," Asuncion stated. "We also make sure tools are in a good usable condition, all the supporting facilities are up to code and that all of the safety items like eye wash stations and emergency showers have up to date inspections in those buildings."

Information collected from inspections, along with changing Air Force instructions and technical orders, can be used by quality assurance Airmen to improve processes and procedures. 

"We feel the most accomplished when we find new things or innovations that can help the mission work more fluidly," Wells said. "Being able to have a different perspective on maintenance gives us an opportunity to look at different processes that could help the 100th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron or 100th Maintenance Squadron make changes that would help streamline maintenance."

With the help of the 100th MXG quality assurance Airmen, maintenance Airmen throughout the group are able to accomplish their mission of getting tankers in the air quickly, efficiently and safely.