Aircraft Information
Aircraft Make: Boeing
Aircraft Model: 767
Aircraft Nickname: Pegasus
Aircraft Mil Civ Description: Large Jet
Category: Airplane
Class: Multi Engine Land
Engine Description: Turbine
First Flown Information
Sequence First Flown:
Date First Flown: 10/05/2016
Location First Flown: Boeing Field, Seattle, WA
Who and/or What Organization First Flown With: Boeing Flight Test, Norm Howell
Aircraft Experience
As of: 07/29/2020
Number of Hours Flown: 174
Number of Times Flown: 67
Other Aircraft Models Associated: 767-2C, KC-46, 767-300
Recollections: The USAF needed a tanker to replace the aging KC-135. After years of contractual wrangling (including Airbus first winning, then losing the competition, and an aborted lease arrangement derailed by Senator John McCain) Boeing finally started working on the replacement. The program was as administratively complicated as is humanly possible…the basic airplane was an Amended Type Cert program called the 767-2C, this would be combined with a Supplemental Type program (STC) called the KC-46A and it would all be managed by 3 different FAA offices, at least 3 USAF offices, and two different wings of the Boeing company. Whew! The meetings were exhasuting!
The airplane was good to fly, although the program was fairly limited in scope from a pilot perspective…owing to similarity of design with it’s predecessors. So…the “good Aero stuff” (like braking, takeoff and landing performance and much of the basic stability and control) was either nonexistent or limited in scope. The “refueling stuff” promised to be interesting but FAA management decided to delegate that mostly to Boeing. What was left was a series of systems testing and basic fuel system testing, along with the ever-interesting testing concerning Smoke and Fire protection aspects.
The airplane was, to me, proof of the adage “a Boeing is a Boeing”. There was talk of getting me a type rating in the 767 but, in the end, the KC-46 was–on the flight deck at least–closer to a 787 than the original 767. And, the procedures we so similar to the other models that transitioning to it was simple.
The best part of the program was the goal….of fielding a successor to the KC-135 that would serve the USAF Warfighter.
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