By Gary Nelson
The Arizona Republic
MESA, Ariz. — If one of your family cars were a 1990 model that had been driven the equivalent of two solid years, you might be pondering a trade-in.
Air miles, of course, aren’t the same as ground miles, but even at that, Mesa thinks it’s about time to upgrade its police helicopter fleet.
The public safety bond question on the Nov. 4 ballot includes $2 million for an item marked “police aviation.” www.tempemarketplace.com
Mesa wants to replace two helicopters that have far surpassed the normal life expectancy for police work. One is a 1990 model with more than 17,000 flight hours and the other dates to 1996, with 14,000 hours under its belt.
That the city has coaxed so many hours out of the old birds at Falcon Field is testament to its meticulous maintenance, said Steve Raether, the department’s chief pilot.
Raether has been on duty for Mesa ever since the city launched its aviation program with a fixed-wing plane in 1986. Seven years after that, the first chopper came on board.
“Helicopters are not like cars,” Raether said. “They’re constantly undergoing inspections and parts are being changed. Almost everything is time-limited. When it gets so much time on it, it is replaced or overhauled. It’s not like your car. You run your car until it breaks. We don’t do that with these.”
The maintenance by the department’s two copter mechanics is not only intense, it’s frequent.
After every 50 hours in the air, a chopper is in the shop. Over time, every part except the basic airframe is either swapped out or overhauled.
Once the airframe goes, Raether said, that’s it. Corrosion or stress fractures would ground the craft for good.
Mesa’s copters are now at the point where those kinds of problems can be expected.
“We were hoping to replace our aircraft when they reached 10,000 hours but through various reasons that gets delayed,” Raether said.
“These helicopters don’t normally get flown as much as we fly them,” Raether said. “We fly a lot of hours with the limited number of aircraft we have. Most agencies that fly as many hours as we do have probably twice as many aircraft.”
Bryan Raines, a deputy city manager in charge of Mesa’s bonding programs, concurred.
“Anybody who flies as many hours as we do probably has double the manpower and double the equipment,” Raines said.
Aviation is an integral part of urban police work, Raether said, and sometimes the air units nail crooks when the ground units can’t.
Several years ago, he said, he spotted a fleeing stolen car as it sped miles ahead of the nearest ground units.
“I lit ‘em up with the searchlight to make sure I had the right car,” Raether said. “And immediately they pulled over to the side, all four doors opened up, four kids get out and put their hands up. The nearest police car was like several miles south.”
When the squad cars arrived, Raether said the thieves told officers they knew they couldn’t outrun a helicopter.
“We do a little different tactic now,” Raether said. “In pursuits now, we go into a covert situation. Climb to a higher altitude, position the aircraft so these guys can’t see us, and then we back off all the ground units. Hopefully the suspect will slow down and we can see where he stopped. So far it’s worked out real well.”
Mesa saves money not only by nursing its elderly aircraft, but with frugal shopping habits.
Earlier this summer as fuel prices soared, it would have cost the city about $5.80 a gallon for helicopter fuel through normal channels.
But police pilot Sherry Burlingame said, “We have in-ground fuel tanks out here. We buy in bulk, 8,000 gallons at a time, so we’re paying just under $4 a gallon right now.”
Mesa still uses the old fixed-wing plane, largely for longer-term surveillance operations, Burlingame said. But the choppers are in the air much more - a total of 3,900 hours last year alone.
“We have an excellent safety record,” Raether said. “And it’s mainly because of the type of aircraft we fly, the maintenance schedule we use and the training we do for pilots.”
Copyright 2008 The Arizona Republic