62nd AMXS activates Phoenix AMU to boost airlift effectiveness

Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash. — The 62nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron has activated a third aircraft maintenance unit to support the 7th Airlift Squadron, a move designed to keep Joint Base Lewis-McChord’s 40 C-17 Globemaster IIIs ready for a slate of missions that accounts for nearly a third of Air Mobility Command’s airlift operations.

Called the Phoenix AMU, the new team joins the Dragon AMU aligned with the 8th Airlift Squadron and the Knight AMU aligned with the 4th Airlift Squadron. The three units are tailored to their associated flying squadrons and typically deploy with them, building continuity and cohesion from home station to downrange.

“It’s important to have three AMUs because when it comes down to how our C-17s are allocated for missions, it allows us to better prepare,” said Senior Master Sgt. David King, 62nd AMXS superintendent for the Phoenix AMU. “It also aligns us with our deployment cycles. When we train, when we equip, when we prepare, we’re doing those things with the airlift squadrons we’re matched with. When our active bin comes up, we’ve already built that team and family over the last 18 months, so when we step out that door, we’re prepared.”

The unit’s stand-up is intended to distribute workload evenly across the fleet and prevent capability gaps when squadrons rotate. “We’re trying to ensure that the three AMUs are mirrored when it comes to people, the aircraft and the mission,” King said. “There’s not one that’s specialized or has different capabilities. The three AMUs have the same number of personnel, same career fields, same number of aircraft, same type of aircraft. If one unit leaves, we don’t run out of capability.”

Leaders also cast Phoenix as a proving ground for maintenance process improvements. “We’re posturing ourselves as a test bed and taking a lot of the ideas of the junior enlisted and trying to see if they can work,” said Master Sgt. Eric Peters, 62nd AMXS production superintendent for the Phoenix AMU. “We’re trying to be as open to feedback and new ideas as possible. We’ve been successful in some ways, unsuccessful in others. We’re hoping to take all of these lessons learned and culminate them into better maintenance practices for everyone.”

One early change has been a deliberate overlap between shifts to reduce friction at turnover and cut down on unplanned overtime. “Each shift comes in two hours before the last shift leaves,” said Staff Sgt. Morcussio Campbell, 62nd AMXS dedicated crew chief for the Phoenix AMU. “In the past, you may have had people on the schedule for eight hours, five days a week, but because there isn’t on-the-line turnover, they end up staying 10 hours anyway. It alleviates a lot of stress. It also forces us to work together and learn each other’s jobs.”

That cross-pollination extends to neighboring specialties and is being codified in the unit’s playbook. “We’re specifically trying to write into our doctrine that we’ll trust people until proven otherwise,” said Peters. “We’ll have that solid relationship so that when push comes to shove and things are time-critical, we can trust each other to execute the mission.”

Phoenix’s first major task underscored the stakes. The AMU accepted aircraft 8199, a C-17 that suffered a severe incident downrange and spent years in depot-level repair. “In 2020, aircraft 8199 took a nosedive while downrange, and ended up going to depot repair for five years or so,” said King. “During that time, they not only repaired all of the structural damage it received, but they ended up taking a bunch of parts off to utilize elsewhere in the fleet. Aircraft 8199 almost served as a proof of concept for our ability to take a jet that’s been broken down for so long and bring it back to a serviceable aircraft.”

Bringing the aircraft back to flight status required extensive troubleshooting and coordination across specialties, leaders said. “When you tear a plane down to that level, there’s a lot of hesitation around flying it because it hasn’t flown for years,” said King. “I think standing up a third AMU comes with that same unease, that same anxiety. The expectation is that it’s going to fail. There were definitely some shortcomings that we didn’t know we had until we stood up. We applied that same resilience to 8199. We said, ‘Let’s keep fixing this, let’s keep nurturing it, and then eventually it will fly.’”

Within about a month of its return to JBLM, the aircraft was ready to fly again. “It was hundreds and hundreds of man-hours,” said Peters. “8199 just happened to be the C-17 that was down for a long time, had the most maintenance work to be done, and happened to be the first one we had to accept when we were brand new. Standing up a new AMU and then having that significant challenge to kind of throw ourselves at was crucial to proving to ourselves that we are a full maintenance team, and we can do this.”

As Phoenix settles in alongside Dragon and Knight, leaders say the goal is to bolster reliability for both combat and humanitarian taskings while protecting the people who keep the jets flying. “At the end of the day, we as a squadron owe mission deliverables,” said King. “We’re still the 62nd AMXS supporting the 40 C-17s at JBLM. For us, the change comes in the culture. Forging with trust, mastering the pace, and rising to the challenge are our three cultural items that tie into this idea of the phoenix. For some reason, we tend to align our value with how much we are giving as maintainers, which is something we’re trying to change over here. When you deploy and you go TDY, you rarely talk about the location. You more or less talk about what you overcame. After everything, that’s what we’re talking about. It’s about preventing burnout and encouraging resiliency, demonstrating that nothing is beyond repair.”