Air Force’s parachute water training moved to Fairchild

Air Force crews will no longer be sent to Florida for training on how to survive when parachuting into water. Starting this month, they’ll get that training at the Survival School at Fairchild Air Force Base.

The school trains Air Force flight crews from around the country on a wide range of survival and evasion tactics if they are ever shot down or forced to eject from their aircraft. Survival classes are taught at the school year-round and already include practice on water rescues and getting out of an aircraft that is submerged.

But students were sent to a special detachment the Air Force maintained at Naval Air Station Pensacola for a three-day course that gave them practice in parachuting into water and getting out of their gear.

That detachment has been moved to the Survival School at Fairchild, a move the Air Force estimates will save about $4.6 million a year in the cost of temporary duty assignments and operating expenses.

Staff Sgt. Veronica Montes, a spokeswoman for Fairchild, said a “relatively small number” of people will be added to the base as a result of the change. No information was available on the cost of moving the program to the West Plains base.

Survival School students will stay at the school a few days longer to complete parachute water training in the base pool, Montes wrote in an email.

The pool was part of a $28 million renovation in 2010. The old base pool was located in a World War II-era warehouse that was badly damaged by heavy snows in the winter of 2008-09.