Wednesday, March 28, 2001

By Fred Knapp, Stars and Stripes

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Plan on flying Space-A home for the holidays next Christmas? If you’re going from Yokota, you better plan on stopping in Okinawa first.

A runway resurfacing project beginning here in October means passengers on "Patriot Express" flights to the United States will have to connect through Okinawa.

The resurfacing project, which is expected to take six to nine months, will also bring a temporary end to popular direct flights from Yokota to Singapore, base spokesman Maj. Stephen Clutter said Monday.

The Air Mobility Command hub is essentially going to move to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa while the first half of Yokota’s runway, then the other, is resurfaced, Clutter said.

Because half the runway will still be in operation, planes that don’t need a long runway, like C-130s and C-17s, still will fly from Yokota to destinations including Okinawa and Korea. The work, however, will displace larger planes, including the L-1011s and MD-80s used for Patriot Express flights to Los Angeles and Seattle, as well as the KC-10 and DC-8 flights to Diego Garcia via Singapore.

Cargo missions handled by 747s and C-5s also will fly out of Kadena instead of Yokota. Clutter said the impact on various units and personnel assigned to Yokota should be announced around June. "There are some people who are going to be (temporarily) working at different locations, including Kadena," he said.

Official travel to bases on the Kanto Plain, such as by personnel moving for temporary duty or permanent change of station, will be handled using commercial flights during the runway work.

Still, he said, the suspension of direct, free flights for vacations and other travel will be significant.

"There are a lot of people who fly ‘Space-A’ out of Yokota," he said.

According to figures supplied by the 730th Air Mobility Squadron, 32,651 people traveled on 3,583 military flights from Yokota in 2000. Of those, more than 20,000 were flying Space-A.

"Those people will still be able to do it, they’ll just have to get to Kadena," Clutter said. There will still be free flights on smaller planes to the Okinawa base, but passengers will then have to switch there to the larger aircraft, instead of flying direct.

"It’s going to cause some disruption, but it’s not going to be impossible," he said. It will require people to be flexible, "which is really what catching an AMC flight is all about," he said.

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