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Pentagon orders US commercial airlines to help with Afghanistan evacuations Blog 
US carriers help in evacuating Americans and Afghans.
The Pentagon is calling in reinforcements from six US commercial airlines on Sunday in its continued Afghanistan evacuation efforts by activating the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF).
The planes would not fly into Kabul but instead would be used to transport those who have already been flown out of the country to military bases, such as in Qatar or Germany, and bring them to the United States.
Military planes will continue to ferry passengers from Kabul to these “temporary safe havens and interim staging bases.”
“Activating CRAF increases passenger movement beyond organic capability and allows military aircraft to focus on operations in and out of Kabul,” the Pentagon said in a statement Sunday.
The Biden administration asked for three planes each from American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Air Lines and Omni Air; two from Hawaiian Airlines; and four from United Airlines.
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Southwest Airlines, which is not part of the CRAF order, told its employees it was seeking to staff Defense Department domestic charters “to support the humanitarian airlift mission for people arriving from Afghanistan.”
It is the third time the CRAF has been activated. Previously it was used in the early 1990s and early 2000s during the Iraq wars.
Speaking to ABC’s This Week, Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, said: “We’re gonna try our very best to get everybody, every American citizen who wants to get out, out. And we continue to look at different ways – creative ways – to reach out and contact American citizens and help them get into the airfield.”
In the last week, the US was able to evacuate 7,000 people from Kabul Airport, including 3,800 from Friday to Saturday.
According to reports, up to 15,000 Americans still need to be evacuated and the administration hopes to get out 50-60,000 more Afghan allies and their families.
In a press conference on Sunday, President Joe Biden said the US will conduct “thorough security screening” of non-US citizens.
More than a dozen other countries, including the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, have also evacuated their citizens and Afghan nationals this week.
