Military personnel on civilian flights?

September 1, 2005 9:10 AM

At Dallas-Fort Worth airport the other day, I saw dozens and dozens of Army soldiers. Presumably, they were about to ship over to Iraq (everyone was in desert gear, families were there, etc.). Were these soldiers traveling via commercial airliners? Aren't there military transport aircraft for that?
posted by Chrysostom to travel & transportation (13 comments total)

Sometimes it's cheaper to charter a commercial airliner. Also, it saves proper military transports for things that commercial airliners can't, shouldn't, or won't do (paratroops, air drops of cargo, unimproved/less-improved runways, etc).
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:17 AM on September 1, 2005

maybe they were going to n'awlins?
posted by yonation at 9:22 AM on September 1, 2005

I think this is the current method of privatizing troop transport/ bailing out the airlines. I'm not sure if the governement gets special cheap fares through Travelocity or if they get the bonus government discount of 5 times the normal coach fare.
posted by JJ86 at 9:30 AM on September 1, 2005

When you deploy most of the time you travel on civilian transport until the very last leg of the trip. It's cheaper, it's contracted. Welcome to the new armed forces of the US.
posted by bigmusic at 9:30 AM on September 1, 2005

They probably were flying to a base in Europe. Possible you saw soldiers on levee and were reporting back to their units.
posted by thomcatspike at 9:52 AM on September 1, 2005

Usually they fly them on commercial flights to one base and then launch them to Iraq. They also could've been going to Memphis via commercial flight to help with N'awlins... there's tons of possibilities.

But yeah, it's cheaper to buy 'em a ticket on a commercial flight for a couple hundred bucks than it is to fly whole troop transports from points A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, and K to point Z at a bajillion dollars an hour.

Y'all should be happy, that's your tax dollars they're saving.
posted by SpecialK at 10:13 AM on September 1, 2005

I recently saw a bunch at Atlanta airport - and on the plane. So yes, they do travel by commercial airliner.
posted by Decani at 10:16 AM on September 1, 2005

Large scale deployments are done 'en masse', the C-5s, C-17s and C-141s land at Base X and pick up, say, an entire Army Division, and take them to point Y.

Lesser deployments and individual moves are done using combinations of military aircraft (if they're headed in the right direction) and commercial aircraft.

You likely could have seen Guard troops going one direction or the other as well.
posted by m@ at 10:28 AM on September 1, 2005

Soldiers departing and leaving Iraq and Afghanistan fly military flights between there and Kuwait.

From Kuwait, they'll take a chartered flight to somewhere in Europe - Germany, Ireland, and Hungary are the countries I've heard of. If they're going to the US, they'll take another chartered flight to one of the major hubs in the US: BWI, Dallas Ft. Worth, O'hare, LAX, again, probably more. From those hubs, it's a regular coach class to the final destination.

It's the opposite in reverse. Civilian, non-chatered flight to the hub, chatered, military- and DoD-passengers-only flight from the hub to Europe then on to Kuwait.

You don't have to go to the US on leave from Iraq or Afghanistan, though. The military will pay for you to fly anywhere in the world. I haven't asked this of anyone who's flown to Australia, a popular destination for those of us deployed, though, so I don't know if they still fly you to Europe first, or if you can fly straight from Kuwait.
posted by cactus at 10:36 AM on September 1, 2005

On my last flight out of Dallas I was seated next to a guy who'd been in Iraq for a year and was about to meet up with his wife in Houston. He was like a five-year-old the whole flight; he couldn't sit still. When we disembarked he literally ran up the walkway to meet her. It was sort of one of the sweetest moments ever. I marked that one down in my everyday cinema notebook.
posted by catesbie at 12:12 PM on September 1, 2005

This is not a new thing. I flew commercial both to and from Vietnam. Both planes were filled with GIs; no civilians.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:18 PM on September 1, 2005

I believe that some of those aircraft may have been mobilized as Civil Reserve Air Fleet.
This is not new. When I was in the National Guard in 1985 we had a charter flight from Colorado to Florida for our Annual Training.
posted by forforf at 8:32 PM on September 1, 2005

This is the airline most frequently chartered to provide military transport: World Airways.
posted by soiled cowboy at 8:08 AM on September 2, 2005