Total force effort enables successful weekly FOD walk

  • Published
  • By Kayla Prather
  • 932nd Airlift Wing

Today, the 932nd Airlift Wing joined a mixture of active duty military, reservists and civilians with Team Scott for the weekly foreign object debris (FOD) walk. About 20 people joined together to clean up debris from the flight line. 

Wing FOD monitor for the 375th Air Mobility Wing, Master Sgt. Johnathan Tolbert spoke on the weekly FOD walks work. 

“Our FOD walks are weekly shared by me and any organization that has a take on the flight line. They participate and after every FOD walk the participation is documented and the weight of all the FOD is [as well] and given to the vice wing commander,” said Tolbert.

The importance of this is to weigh and track all of the debris to be able to log it. This is used to see how much is accumulated weekly.  932nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron flight line expeditor Master Sgt. Sandro Cardona shared the reason why these walks are every week.

“The reason why we do these FOD walks every week is to try to prevent any type of damage to any Air Force asset. It may seem like a small thing that we just walk up and down the flight line, but any little piece of metal or debris could potentially damage an engine,” said Cardona.

He also shared how these walks promote readiness between the airmen as well as keeping the aircraft ready to launch anytime.  

“When we launch an aircraft we have to do a FOD walk prior to parking it into its spot. So, this would eliminate any type of debris going into the engine when we start it and launch the aircraft,” Cardona said.

“Then afterwards, when the aircraft launches, we do another FOD walk to make sure that nothing fell off of it so we stay prepared and ready at all times,” added Cardona. 

The readiness of the air crafts depends on the individual readiness of each airman and this is why the FOD walks are so imperative, as Cardona stated.