By SARAH CAMPBELL
Leader staff writer
The world champion 314th Airlift Wing at Little Rock Air Force Base has gained two new trophies and handed off one to its sister wing, the 19th Airlift Wing, after
Air Mobility Command discovered a programming error in the 2011 Air Mobility Rodeo scoring system.
The 314th is now also the best Air Mobility wing and best airdrop wing in the world after the scoring error was corrected. The 19th Airlift Wing took the best airdrop air crew title away from the 314th.
The 314th had previously won six trophies during last month’s competition in Washington state. They included best C-130 team, best C-130 airdrop wing, best C-130 maintenance skills team, best C-130 maintenance team and best overall maintenance skills team.
Col. Mark Czelusta, 314th Airlift Wing com mander, said that when he announced the loss of the best C-130 airdrop air crew trophy to the 19th Airlift Wing, “the place erupted into cheers. They were just beaming.”
It is the only trophy the 19th Airlift Wing, which was named best C-130 wing at the rodeo in 2009, earned this year.
“This has always been a team effort, reflective of the partnership of the 314th and the 19th,” Czelusta added.
Czelusta said, “I’m thrilled and honored to be the commander of these forces. Our nation clearly deserves them and I am humbled to be with them.”
The 314th Airlift Wing will be presented the 2011 Air Mobility Rodeo Best Air Mobility Wing trophy during a ceremony on base Monday morning. The 19th Airlift Wing will be presented the Best C-130 Airdrop Aircrew in a separate ceremony,
More than 40 teams and 2,500 people from the U.S. Air Force, Air Force Reserve, Air National Guard and several foreign countries participated in the competition.
Air Mobility Command officials found the programming error on Aug. 18 after doing another check of the results before posting the detailed scores for rodeo competitors to access.
“There is an automated process in the scoring algorithm which improperly assigned a median score for an event,” said Maj. Gen. Frederick H. Martin, director of operations at AMC headquarters and rodeo commander.
“This program error was not found in testing,” he continued. “All manual scoring processes were triple checked; however, there was not a final check for one critical portion of the automated scoring process.”
The error was isolated to the C-17 and C-130 Container Delivery System airdrop scores. No international team awards were affected.
Rodeo is the Air Force’s and Air Mobility Command’s premier air-mobility competition. The competition held the last week of July at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., draws the “best of the best” from air forces around the world.
