CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas –
Who do you call to offload and upload support equipment for world famous flight demonstration team, the Navy Blue Angels? DLA Distribution Corpus Christi, Texas- that’s who!
In preparation for the 2017 Wings Over South Texas Air Show, the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi command determined that they did not have the necessary equipment or specialized capabilities to support material movements from a C-130 cargo aircraft. As a result, the organization reached out to the DLA Distribution Corpus Christi Airlift Team for help. The Airlift Team is composed of personnel who offload helicopters from global customers for maintenance and repair at the Corpus Christi Army Depot.
When the team’s Local Delivery/Shipping and Disposition supervisor Gary Stacy received the call from NAS Corpus Christi, he says he recognized the great opportunity for the team to demonstrate DLA’s logistical capabilities, especially for a customer as prestigious as the Blue Angels.
Stacy informed the team of the opportunity and the employees were ecstatic to work on the project. The team’s 40,000 Loader lead operator, Charity Gomez, was the most excited due to the fact that she had missed the last opportunity to command the 40,000 Loader to a C-17 aircraft and also had not had the opportunity to approach a C-130 Cargo plane before.
The C-130 arrived at NAS Corpus Christi on March 30 and the team sprang into action. Employees offloaded the incoming support material using their 40,000 Loader, a 15,000 forklift driven by Jon Rogers, and a Tractor/Trailer driven by Chad Salinas. Employees Robert Stephens and Ed Buckelew worked in unison with the C-130 loadmasters for precision movements of palletized material onto the K Loader.
The evolution was a great success and the Blue Angels ground support and maintenance teams were thrilled at how quickly DLA transported, offloaded, and placed their equipment.
Army Lt. Col. Brian Richie, DLA Distribution Corpus Christi, Texas, commander, congratulated the team for a job well done, saying, “This was a great opportunity to demonstrate DLA’s unique logistical capacity to the Department of Defense. Your superior efforts to complete this action, both timely and without incident, serves as a testament of providing cost effective services to our customers.”