To ensure that aircraft will not have an emergency landing in mountains due to force majeure, other large aircrafts are used to lift damaged aircraft to a safe zone for an examination and repair. National Airborne Service Corps (NASC) of the Ministry of the Interior has requested Mr. Robert, original aircraft manufacturer’s technical representative stationed at NASC, to serve as the instructor of the Unit Maintenance Aerial Recovery Kit (UMARK) technical assembly training, which will be carried out on aircraft maintenance personnel of the Second Brigade of Taichung Ching Chuan Kang Air Base on November 22, 2022. During the training period, the 601st and 602nd Brigades of the Army Aviation and Special Forces Command and aircraft maintenance company “Air Asia Company Limited” will also dispatch personnel to learn the techniques and exchange opinions in order to facilitate the following collaboration works.
NASC is a domestic non-military unit and the only unit that supports the five missions of aircrafts, where all of its missions are dispatched on the basis of “irregular time” and “unspecified location” with unpredictable mission type. It is especially so for mountain rescue missions, which are often conducted in a dangerous terrain and weather conditions. General Commander of NASC Ching Yen-yuan is known for rigorous military management and pays great attention particular on exclave/enclave safety and disciplines. He is strict on conducting periodic inspections before, during and after the fly and at all levels; system structure inspections; completion inspections; technical modification or reporting and other maintenance works on a regular basis. The Quality Assurance Department is also requested to repeat the examination in order to implement aircraft maintenance plan.
NASC flights often implement rescue mission in high, steep and sparsely populated mountains. General Commander Ching Yen-yuan has made special instructions to related units to always “think about the worst conditions and do the best preparations” and to think about all possible problems. For example, how to respond to the situation that an aircraft breaks down in the wild with impossibility of transporting machineries to the site for repairing the aircraft. With the efforts of aircraft affair unit, NASC is expected to coordinate with the Army Aviation and Special Forces Command to implement air hoist and transportation works as specified in the Tri-Service Support Agreement. That is, to fix the aircraft on the hook using UMARK and then move the aircraft to a safe area with the CH-47 flight.
Although the pandemic has affected the implementation of aircraft removal materials and equipment training and UMARK technical assembly training, all trainees will be able to understand the fatigue life and damage tolerance of UMARK webbing/cargo net and ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) synthetic longlines under Mr. Robert’s instructions. All of these enable trainees to know about the flight load on the aircraft during the air recovery mission. In the meantime, actual practice and drills using UMARK will help trainees to do a good preparation before a problem occurs.