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.
Trainees in Basic Military Training and technical school no longer have the option to try alternate PT drills if they fail an initial assessment, according to a policy change the Air Force made in April. The move is part of a larger shift out of the classroom and into hands-on,…