Egress: (noun) a place or means of going out, exit.

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Antonio Gonzalez
  • 2nd Bomb Wing Public Affairs
BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. --  A B-52 aircrew prepares for a routine flight and all systems are "go". This mission, like many other missions, will likely end with little to no adversity, or so everyone thinks.

Somewhere over the pacific, an engine catches fire. The pilots try to stabilize the plane but to no avail. They're losing altitude fast.

Lucky for them, there is an entire Air Force specialty code dedicated to getting that aircrew out before the plane crashes, Aircrew Egress Systems.

"We're one of those jobs that nobody knows what we do until they see someone eject. Then it's like, oh, egress had a hand in that," said Tech. Sgt. Wendell Conyers, Air Crew Egress Systems, 2 Maintenance Squadron, NCO in-charge.

The Airmen who work in egress fall under the 2 MXS. Their main function is to work on the ejection seats and escape systems of an aircraft.

The escape systems are a set of mechanical and ballistic explosives that work in sequence to ensure the pilot gets out. They ensure the hatch leaves the aircraft first, then the seat initiates and it takes the pilot out. In the end, the pilot ends up in the chute and descends to safety.

"We maintain the explosives so the escape system is ready to go because there is no way to test the system. This is why it has to be right the first time. There aren't any second chances when the plane is going down. The pilot needs to know when he pulls the handle, it's going to perform as advertised," said Conyers.

The aircraft can not go anywhere without an egress technician signing off, because ejection seats are a life-sustaining item. If any aircrew affects any part of the system then egress technicians have to inspect the whole system.

"If the pilot has a problem with his lap belt, disconnects it and puts it back in, we have to go out there and inspect the whole system he is sitting in to make sure there is nothing wrong with it" said Senior Airman Shawn Layou, 2 MXS egress technician.

Everything egress does is a two-man concept, which means that one person is reading the manual and the other person is performing the task.

"The job is a very tedious one. Nothing is really hard, just very slow moving. Our tasks take several hours to do. We remove the hatches off the aircraft, bring them back to the shop, tear them apart, gather the information, reassemble them, then inspect them before we put them back on the aircraft just to get some numbers," said Conyers.

Egress technicians constantly move from the flightline to the back shop since they are the only people certified to handle their equipment, making them somewhat of a hybrid AFSC.

"Being in the maintenance squadron many people assume egress is a back shop, but we also support the flightline. No one really knows where we fit in, it's been said that we're the duck-billed platypus of maintenance," said Conyers.

What egress technicians do on a day-to-day basis saves pilots lives. They fit in our Air Force just fine.

"My favorite thing about this job is when we save a life," said Conyers. "When you're reading in the Air Force Times or Stars and Stripes that somebody survived an ejection, you know that egress was there."