I flew in her from GITMO to Opa Locka once in '91, I think. We were on our way back from a LEDET deployment. Those cargo seats could've used a little work. I remember the pilot being an older, over-weight guy in an LT flight suit.
The Casa and the Pilots from Miami would soon slice the Opbat per diem rate from 120.00 per day down to about 60.00 a day, still a money maker.Did make it more difficult for many to make the payments on those new BMW's in the parking lot at A/S Clearwater.Another reason to look at HH-60's on the back of ships
I had the pleasure of being a basic aircrewman from the ASM shop on this airframe when it came to Miami in 1993. It was a long flight to gitmo and back, but we could take alot more people and equipment than the Falcon.
The Casa was a good thing, prior to that the deployment crews would stuff an HH-3F with everything needed for two weeks ie bicycles,food,toys.Truly an egress nightmare,so they decided to leave airframes at deployment site and just ferry crews back and forth in Casa,C-130 or commercial,the latter being a treat,this when you could check a pelican box with 4 9mm beretta's in it.
I remember being so impressed by the fact that plane always made it's flights whereas us with the those Falcons would struggle to make the flight sked with one of 10 Falcons we had. The plane was slow but it was reliable...
Originally posted by rsdfc1: ...commercial,the latter being a treat,this when you could check a pelican box with 4 9mm beretta's in it.
We did fly commercial back once on those island hoppers. No bad except for the islander lady sitting in the back who obviously had never flown before, and screamed and cried pretty much the whole way. It was certainly easier getting the 9mm's back on CG Air, than on commercial.
