A pair of the Air Force’s most versatile cargo aircraft will buzz Juneau at around noon on Friday as part of a demonstration of thanks towards medical and emergency personnel.<\/p>\n
“It’s to boost a little morale for the communities, as a gesture of thanks towards those on the forefront of the COVID-19 response,” said Master Sgt. Jonathan Foster, public affairs specialist at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, in a phone interview. “Because defending the homeland has taken a new shape, we’re proud to serve alongside the first responders during these response efforts.”<\/p>\n
The two aircraft, C-17 Globemaster IIIs, come from the Air Force’s 517th Airlift Squadron and the Alaska Air National Guard’s 144th Airlift Squadron. C-17s are purpose-built to transport troops, tanks or even smaller aircraft to and from the battlespace. They are capable of landing nimbly on short, poorly improved runways. The C-17’s maximum payload is approximately 170,000 lbs, or the weight of roughly 170 adult moose.<\/p>\n
Foster said the flyover, which will include appearances in Wasilla, Palmer, Valdez, Cordova, Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka, took a bit of coordination with local airports to make sure there was no take offs or landings scheduled during the flyover window, Foster said.<\/p>\n
The flyover in Juneau is scheduled to take place precisely at noon, although a release from JBER cautioned that slippage and weather conditions may push the arrival of the aircraft 10 minutes to the left or right. The aircraft will be flying a single pass down the Gastineau Channel from north to south as they fly from Cordova to Ketchikan.<\/p>\n
“If we do have to cancel we’ll look at possibly doing another flyover,” Foster said. “It’s been a little bit of an undertaking coordinating it all.” <\/p>\n
• Contact reporter Michael S. Lockett at 757.621.1197 or mlockett@juneauempire.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The demonstration comes on the heels of similar demos in the Lower 48. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":60498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[703,75,103],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-60497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-coronavirus","tag-local-news","tag-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60497"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=60497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}