AVIANO AIR BASE, Italy -- From certifying motorcycle drivers and briefing incoming Airmen to ensuring munitions are properly stored, the 31st Fighter Wing Safety office brings Airmen together from a variety of career fields to accomplish its mission.
“For our office, we have a vision,” said Lt. Col. Chad Ashcraft, 31st FW Safety chief, “To be a productive family, we focus on our vision of four disciplines working together to mitigate risks at Aviano.”
These four disciplines are Airmen from the maintenance, weapons, aerospace physiology and munitions systems career fields who come together to draw from their varied backgrounds and bring a specialized expertise to their sections.
The flight safety section focuses on safeguarding pilots and their aircraft by assisting the bird strike prevention program and keeping the runway clean from foreign object debris. The section also investigates runway infringements, collects flight safety data and investigates flight mishaps.
While flight safety ensures the aircraft can take off and land safely, weapons safety manages the safety of munitions and the Airmen who handle them.
According to Staff Sgt. Luke Cline, 31st FW Safety weapons safety manager, this section focuses on everything from the July 4th fireworks show and random unit inspection to ensuring each unit’s loading procedures and storage facilitates are safe.
With these two sections working to keep the aircraft and their weapons safe, the aerospace physiology section works to keep aircrews safe while flying. This is done by Capt. James Brown, 31st Aerospace Medicine Squadron aerospace and operational physiologist, who liaises between the pilots and medical and safety feilds.
“The main purpose of everything is to prevent future mishaps,” said Brown.
He also helps to prevent mishaps by training 555th and 510th Fighter Squadron pilots to recognize and counteract the signs of hypoxia and teaching anti-G straining maneuvers.
“Here at Aviano we don’t have an altitude chamber,” said Brown. “We have a reduced oxygen breathing device - basically an altitude chamber in a box. With this little box I can induce hypoxia while a pilot is in the flight simulator. This is important because it allows pilots to learn the signs of hypoxia and provides a safe training environment to teach corrective emergency procedures.”
The final section within the Safety office is occupational safety. This section investigates workcenter-related mishaps as well as vehicle incidents and reports safety trends commanders.
“Our investigations are solely for mishap prevention purposes,” said Tech. Sgt. David Mace, 31st FW Safety NCO in charge of occupational safety. “Our main function is to find the root cause of [mishaps].”
The section also hosts the wing’s hands-on driving class and hosts the Motorcycle Safety Foundation course.
“Effective communication and transparency is the most important part of our job,” said Mace. “You can read a regulation to somebody all day, but if that person doesn’t take what you just read them and apply it, then it means nothing. You have to effectively communicate what you want them to do.”
Mace teaches this communication mindset to unit safety representatives during monthly classes. The USRs work closely with their commander to manage their unit’s safety program. Together, the Safety office and the USRs help to keep Wyvern Warriors safe.
“We are here to help, we are never here to hinder,” said Mace. “A lot of people see safety as ‘Oh no, Safety is here, they’re going to stop the party!’ No, we just help identify what is necessary to keep the party going.”