While most cargo and passenger planes stay thousands of feet apart in the air, the big KC-10 roared up just below where Fernkas lay, close enough that the wings patch on the other pilot’s jumpsuit was clearly visible. All this while both aircraft raced 300 miles per hour over the Atlantic Ocean.

For gas stations in the sky, this is full-service.

Known as a boom operator, Fernkas controls a long pipe that extends off the back of the plane like a tail. Her aircraft, the size of medium passenger jet, is an aerial refueling tanker known as the KC-135, one of about 450 the Air Force operates. Fuel is stored in the plane’s wings and below the cabin floor. Gassing up a fighter could take just a few minutes. Bigger planes may take up to a half hour.

With a joy stick in one hand and a lever in the other, she “flies” the boom, guiding the tip slowly into a gas nozzle on top of the other plane, a KC-10 that also serves as a tanker, although bigger. Once it slides into place, the boom can deliver a portion of the 200,000 pounds of jet fuel the KC-135 can carry.

“The tanker is key to our entire mission,” said Gen. Arthur Lichte, head of the Air Force command that oversees the KC-135. It gasses up other aircraft in flight, allowing everything from fighter jets to lumbering cargo planes to fly farther than they could on one tank of gas.

The Pentagon has been trying for a decade to build new refueling planes to replace the KC-135, some of which date from mid-1950s, like the one Fernkas flew in. But the effort has been stymied by bitter competition among contractors, heavy pressure from Congress and missteps by the Air Force.

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