Airlift Overwork

The transport planes of the U.S. Air Force’s Air Mobility Command — used to ship supplies and personnel to Bosnia and Somalia — have been working almost nonstop since the Persian Gulf War, and now some of the giant C-141s and C-5s are showing worrisome wing cracks and other signs of fatigue. The Air Force is still struggling to catch up on maintenance that had been scheduled two years < ago but was interrupted by the Kuwait crisis. Said one C-141 pilot: “If we were a union, there’s no way this carrier could continue flying.”