Personnel of the 59th Medical Wing from Lackland AFB, Tex., airlifted seven-year-old Meaghan Ababa from Hawaii to Los Angeles in what her doctors describe as a “miracle” flight. The girl had been placed on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine to aid her failing heart and lungs, but the doctors in Hawaii couldn’t perform a heart transplant should it be needed. Moving a patient on an ECMO machine is tricky, so the doctors enlisted the help of a specialized team at USAF’s Wilford Hall Medical Center to undertake the eight-hour flight aboard a C-17.
Aircraft readiness will suffer if Congress does not approve some $1.5 billion worth of spare parts the Air Force requested in its annual Unfunded Priorities List, sent to Capitol Hill last week, Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said.