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315th receives AFRC flight safety achievement award

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Mary Hinson
  • 315th Airlift Wing
CHARLESTON AFB, S.C. --  The 315th Airlift Wing’s safety office captured the Air Force Reserve Command flight safety achievement award for 2005.

This award recognizes the most effective flight safety program in the command. The selection criteria includes organization flight safety performance records and achievements as well as complexity and types of mission. .

The wing had no major mishaps in fiscal year 2005 with over 20,000 flight hours, 62,000 tons of cargo and 45,000 passengers. They accomplished these statistics despite trying tactical contingency, humanitarian and presidential support taskings, according to Lt. Col. Deb Rieflin, former chief of wing safety.

“The real kudos go to the 315th AW aircrew members who fly safely every day,” said Colonel Rieflin.

“With nearly 20,000 flying hours last year alone and an impeccable safety record despite the Herculean ops tempo of the Global War on Terror, their support of all our flight safety programs and compliance with hazard identification and reporting requirements helped us win this award,” Colonel Rieflin said.

Rieflin said the wing led the way in identifying and mitigating our greatest risk factor to safe mission accomplishment: aircrew fatigue.

“We addressed the problem head-on with fatigue countermeasures education and integration of objective aircrew fatigue risk assessment into operational risk management processes wing-wide,” said Colonel Rieflin. “Those very tools are now being incorporated AMC-wide,” she added.

Colonel Rieflin said the safety staff workload is always challenging because “safety issues cannot be ignored or tabled. There are rarely enough hours in the hours in the day to accomplish all that we want to do, but with the help of aircrews and leadership we’ve been able to “be on the safe side in 2005’ “

Now the chief of aircrew training, Colonel Rieflin said she, “looks forward to maintaining my strongly safety-guided perspective and remind all wing personnel to “keep safety in the mix in 2006."