Officials at Travis AFB, Calif., held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the opening of the base’s reconstructed runway and its new landing zone. The March 28 ceremony symbolized the completion of the three-year, $68 million construction project, according to a Travis release. As part of the opening ceremony, a C-17 transport conducted a touch-and-go landing on the reconstructed runway, reported the Daily Republic of Fairfield-Suisun, Calif., on March 31. For the project, workers utilized 99,000 tons of material from the old runway and reconstructed it into the new one, and built the landing zone from scratch, states the base’s March 26 release. The reconstructed runway is one of Travis’ two main runways. The new landing zone will enable Travis’ aircrews to conduct combat training at home instead of having to fly to Washington state, saving an estimated $7.3 million per year in fuel costs, according to the newspaper’s report. Travis is home to C-5 and C-17 transports and KC-10 tankers. (See also March 29 report from Sacramento CBS TV news station.)
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.