About 1,300 senior airman became ineligible to be considered in the latest round of promotions to staff sergeant because a litany of errors resulted in their files reflecting a score of zero in the Weighted Airman Promotion System, according to the Air Force Personnel Center.

"These 'zeroes' are a result of numerous factors to include score sheet errors, pending skill-level waivers, pending SKT score sheet, missing EPRs, etc.," AFPC posted Aug. 24 on its Facebook page.

The error in enlisted promotions was the second to come to light in August. Earlier, 85 tech sergeants were not considered for promotion to master sergeant because their enlisted performance reports were missing or not properly loaded into the Personnel Records Display Application.

And the problem reportedly is not new.

"Last year there were nearly 3,800 SrA [senior airmen] Air Force wide, during the 14E5 promotion cycle, who were in this same situation," a chief master sergeant wrote in an email posted by the military blog John Q. Public, which first reported that senior airmen had not been considered for promotion to staff sergeant because they had received zeroes as their WAPS scores. The blog is authored by retired Air Force Lt. Col. Tony Carr.

AFPC has already manually fixed a majority of mismarked or incomplete scores for 900 of the affected airmen and is working to get any documents not received in time for the most recent promotion cycle, said AFPC spokesman Mike Dickerson.

Once records are correct, they will be submitted through the supplemental promotion process.

"We anticipate the vast majority of those affected by the 'zero' will have their records re-run in the September in-system supplemental," Dickerson said in an Aug. 27 email. "The next E5-E9 supplemental promotion release is currently scheduled for Sept. 10. The remainder will be processed as AFPC receives necessary documents from servicing military personnel sections."

Carr initially reported that the affected airmen's promotion tests had been lost in the mail, but Dickerson said that was not the case.

"We have not received information leading us to believe that any test sheets have been lost," he said. "There has been only one instance in nearly 20 years when tests were physically lost by a contracted carrier. That has not occurred in this case."

In July 2014, AFPC announced that the answer sheets for 99 airmen at Pope Field, North Carolina, had been lost in the mail and a "significant majority" of those airmen had tested for staff sergeant.

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