An eight-year-old partnership between Airbus and the U.S. Coast Guard has racked up 100,000 hours in the air, which breaks down into thousands of missions and hundreds of lives saved.
Airbus' Final Assembly Line at the Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley has made international headlines over the last two years, as it has ramped up production of A320-family jetliners. Visitors to Brookley also pass by a separate engineering unit. By comparison, the Airbus Defense and Space facility in west Mobile has a relatively low profile, with an easy-to-overlook entrance near the bustling intersection of Schillinger Road and Airport Boulevard.
But that's where Coast Guard personnel, Airbus executives and political leaders gathered Friday morning to celebrate a milestone for the HC-144A Ocean Sentry airplane. In eight years of service, the Coast Guard's fleet of 18 Ocean Sentries has racked up a combined 100,000 hours in the air.
Airbus reckons that includes 3,500 search and rescue missions saving 620 lives, plus 8,400 law enforcement missions including 890 drug interdictions. And like the Coast Guard's helicopter fleet, the Ocean Sentries play a key role in hurricane response.
Speaking Friday, Capt. Joe Kimball explained that Mobile and the HC-144A have a special relationship: The first ones in Coast Guard service arrived in Mobile in 2009. He was executive officer of the USCG Aviation Training Center Mobile then, as crews were trained for the new aircraft, he said. Later he became commanding officer of Air Station Miami, as an Ocean Sentry unit was stationed there.
The HC-144A, built in Spain, flies much slower than the small jet it replaced, Kimball said, and it could stay in the air a lot longer. The ability to "loiter" was a real strength in search-and-rescue missions, he said, as well as in reconnaissance flights such as those following the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.
The twin-engine turboprop's robust landing gear and sizable cargo bay, combined with an ability to take off from short runways, make it a big asset in disaster-recovery work, Kimball said. In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, he said, Ocean Sentries played just such a role.
His most memorable flight as a pilot, he said, came after the Deepwater Horizon, when he ferried a load of distressed wildlife to animal rescue workers. "I was a pilot on one of these flights where we flew 51 pelicans out to Texas," he said. They'd been told to keep the air-conditioning off, to avoid harming the oil-soaked birds, and the smell is something he'll never forget.
Kimball said ATC Mobile has trained 169 Ocean Sentry Pilots. According to Airbus, the planes are based in Cape Cod, Mass.; Corpus Christi, Texas; Miami, Fla.; and Mobile. Almost all Coast Guard flights out of ATC Mobile are for training purposes, he said, but the based does have one operational unit that flies search-and-rescue missions - and they fly Ocean Sentries.
The Coast Guard does its own maintenance, he said, but the Airbus Defense and Space center in Mobile does provide engineering support. The Mobile installation does maintenance and repair work on a variety of other aircraft, and manufactures some parts as well.
According to Airbus, the Ocean Sentry is a version of the Airbus CN235; more than 200 of them are in use in more than two dozen countries. Stephan Miegel, head of military aircraft services for Airbus Defence and Space, said he regretted to inform the Coast Guard that it was only the third agency to hit the 100,000-hour mark, after the French air force and the South Korean military.
However, he said the Coast Guard had hit that milestone faster than anyone else, and he expected the rapid pace to continue. He estimate the Ocean Sentries will have racked up 200,000 flight hours by 2022.
Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson and Mobile County Commissioner said they were proud to have Coast Guard personnel stationed in Mobile, and wanted the area to be a place where they were happy to live.
"It's ceremonies like this that make us realize in the city of Mobile how blessed we are," Stimpson said.