Comments on: Military personnel on civilian flights?

Question: Military personnel on civilian flights?

Chrysostom — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 09:10:08 -0800

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?

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 09:17:59 -0800

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).

By: yonation

yonation — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 09:22:49 -0800

maybe they were going to n'awlins?

By: JJ86

JJ86 — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 09:30:20 -0800

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.

By: bigmusic

bigmusic — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 09:30:39 -0800

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.

By: thomcatspike

thomcatspike — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 09:52:19 -0800

They probably were flying to a base in Europe. Possible you saw soldiers on levee and were reporting back to their units.

By: SpecialK

SpecialK — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 10:13:40 -0800

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.

By: Decani

Decani — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 10:16:08 -0800

I recently saw a bunch at Atlanta airport - and on the plane. So yes, they do travel by commercial airliner.

By: m@

m@ — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 10:28:42 -0800

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.

By: cactus

cactus — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 10:36:16 -0800

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.

By: catesbie

catesbie — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 12:12:04 -0800

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.

By: Kirth Gerson

Kirth Gerson — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 17:18:10 -0800

This is not a new thing. I flew commercial both to and from Vietnam. Both planes were filled with GIs; no civilians.

By: forforf

forforf — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 20:32:30 -0800

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.

By: soiled cowboy

soiled cowboy — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 08:08:34 -0800

This is the airline most frequently chartered to provide military transport: World Airways.