When Supplier Ops Program Manager Rusty Foster reflects on the massive cross-functional undertaking to store over 550 Delta planes grounded because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he thinks of the motto his Navy Reserve construction team lived by.
“The difficult, we do right away. The impossible takes a little longer.”
When Rusty was first called to action, it was March 2020 and the pandemic was in full force. Customer demand was dropping, and there was an uneasiness settling in as flights took off with fewer and fewer passengers.
Rusty had the day off and was getting ready to head back to Jacksonville, Florida, where he was performing heavy maintenance checks on aircraft. One of his leaders gave him a call and asked if he could go to Blytheville, Arkansas, to start parking part of Delta’s fleet.
The pandemic was already rearing its head: a long drive to Memphis International Airport, a canceled flight and another eight-hour car trip later, Rusty was finally in Blytheville.
PARKING THE FLEET
“That day they started flying in MD-88s. It was like watching the skyline in Atlanta in the evening when you can see the pattern planes are flying in, just one after another,” Rusty said.
That first day they parked 14 planes. The next day, another 14.
Throughout 2020, Rusty worked in Blytheville; Kansas City; Marana, Arizona; and Birmingham, Alabama. At the peak of the pandemic, we parked 571 mainline aircraft across the country. Each location came with its own challenges— whether it was the humidity in Birmingham or the desert critters and extreme heat in Marana.
An undertaking that massive would require a seasoned touch. That’s where Bob Warde came in. He’d worked for 10 years storing MD-88s and MD-90s in Blytheville, some for parts, some for an eventual return to service.
