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Charlie…
During
taxi, the crew of a US AIR departure flight to Ft. Lauderdale
made a wrong turn and came nose to nose with a United
727. The irate ground controller (a female) screamed,
"US Air 2771, where are you going? I
told you to turn right on
"Charlie" taxiway; you turned right on "Delta.
Stop right there! I know it's
difficult to tell the difference between C's
& D's, but get it right!" Continuing
her lashing to the embarrassed crew, she was now shouting
hysterically, "God, you've
screwed everything up; it'll take forever to
sort this out. You stay right there and don't move until
I tell you to! Then, I want you to go exactly
where I tell you, when I tell you, and how I tell you. You
got that, USAir 2771?"
The
humbled crew responded, "Yes, Ma'am." The ground
control frequency went terribly silent; no
one wanted to engage the irate
ground controller in her current state. Tension
in every cockpit at LGA was running high. Then
an unknown male pilot broke the silence and asked, "Wasn't
I married to you once?"
(Contributed
to www.aviationhumour.co.uk by John Greenfield) |
"Ops
Normal"
A B727
en-route to Zagreb. An early morning flight, full of holidaymakers...
B727: Ah,
Birmingham Ops, good morning, this is the 773. We were off the blocks
at one-two, estimating Zagreb on schedule. We have One-twenty-seven plus
two, nil freight, and ops are normal, over.
Dispatch:
Er 773, that's all copied. We have, er, a gentleman in the office
who claims to be your flight mechanic, over!!
727: Standby!
Pause
727: Ah,
Sh*@! We forgot him! We have to come back, over. I er (intelligible)
(flight
mechanic was eventually re-united with his flight. He'd been buying
chocolate in the terminal duty-free shop)
(Contributed to
www.aviationhumour.co.uk by Guy Buesnel)
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On
a Wing and a Prayer - From Sports Illustrated, by Rick Reilly
Now
this message for America's most famous athletes: Someday you
may be invited to fly in the backseat of
one of your country's most powerful
fighter jets. Many of you already have -- John Elway, John
Stockton, Tiger Woods to name a few. If
you get this opportunity, let me
urge you, with the greatest sincerity....
Move
to Guam. Change your name. Fake your own death. Whatever you
do, do not go. I know. The U.S. Navy
invited me to try it. I was thrilled.
I was pumped. I was toast! I should've known when they told
me my pilot would be Chip (Biff) King of Fighter Squadron 213
at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia
Beach. Whatever you're thinking a
Top Gun named Chip (Biff) King looks like, triple it. He's
about six-foot, tan, ice-blue eyes, wavy surfer hair, finger-crippling
handshake -- the kind of man who wrestles dyspeptic alligators
in his leisure time. If you see this man, run the other way.
Fast. Biff King was born to fly. His father, Jack King, was
for years the voice of NASA missions.
("T-minus 15 seconds and counting...."
Remember?) Chip would charge neighborhood kids a quarter
each to hear his dad. Jack would wake up from naps surrounded
by nine-year-olds waiting for him to say,
"We have a lift-off." Biff was to
fly me in an F-14D Tomcat, a ridiculously powerful $60 million
weapon with nearly as much thrust
as weight, not unlike Colin Montgomerie. I
was worried about getting airsick, so the night before the
flight I asked Biff if there was
something I should eat the next morning. "Bananas,"
he said. "For the potassium?" I asked. "No,"
Biff said, "because they taste
about the same coming up as they do going down."
The
next morning, out on the tarmac, I had on my flight suit with my
name sewn over the left breast. (No call
sign -- like Crash or Sticky or Leadfoot
-- but, still, very cool.) I carried my helmet in the crook
of my arm, as Biff had instructed. A
fighter pilot named Psycho gave me a safety
briefing and then fastened me into my ejection seat, which, when
employed, would "egress" me out
of the plane at such a velocity that I would
be immediately knocked unconscious.
Just as I was thinking about aborting the
flight, the canopy closed over me, and Biff gave the ground crew
a thumbs-up.
In
minutes we were firing nose up at 600 mph. We leveled
out and then canopy-rolled over another
F-14. Those 20 minutes were the rush
of my life. Unfortunately, the ride lasted 80. It was like being
on the roller coaster at Six Flags
Over Hell. Only without rails. We did barrel
rolls, sap rolls, loops, yanks and banks. We dived, rose and
dived again, sometimes with a
vertical velocity of 10,000 feet per minute. We chased
another F-14, and it chased us. We broke the speed of sound. Sea
was sky and
sky was sea. Flying at 200 feet we did 90-degree turns at 550
mph, creating
a G force of 6.5, which is to say I felt as if 6.5 times my
body weight was smashing against me,
thereby approximating life as Mrs. Colin
Montgomerie. And I egressed the bananas.
I
egressed the pizza from the night before. And the lunch before
that. I egressed a box of Milk Duds
from the sixth grade. I made Linda Blair look
polite. Because of the G's, I was egressing stuff that did not
even want to be egressed. I went
through not one airsick bag, but two. Biff said
I passed out. Twice. I was coated in sweat. At one point, as we
were coming
in upside down in a banked curve on a mock bombing target and
the G's were flattening me like a tortilla
and I was in and out of consciousness,
I realized I was the first person in history to throw down.
I
used to know cool. Cool was Elway throwing a touchdown pass, or
Norman making a five-iron bite. But now I
really know cool. Cool is guys like
Biff, men with cast-iron stomachs and Freon nerves. I wouldn't
go up there again for Derek Jeter's
black book, but I'm glad Biff does every day,
and for less a year than a rookie reliever makes in a home
stand.
A
week later, when the spins finally stopped, Biff called. He said
he and the fighters had the perfect
call sign for me. Said he'd send it on a patch
for my flight suit. What is it? I asked.
"Two
Bags."
(From
Sports Illustrated, by Rick Reilly) |
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Maintenance…
This
happened to me.
I
was flying a DC-3 years ago when the flight attendant complains
that there were mouse droppings in
the galley. So I snagged it in the
log book.
Pilot
entry: " Mouse in galley"
maintenance;
" CAT INSTALLED"
(By:
Kevin Gray) |
Don’t
worry…
During
the approach, the airplane suddenly starts to shiver. The next
moment they are going down very quickly.
A passenger in the cabin begins to pray
and is certainly not at ease. Another
passenger next to him says "Don't worry sir, those two men
in front are professionals. They
know what they are doing."
The
first passenger replies: "Yes
indeed, I'm a pilot myself, and I know exactly what they are
doing..."
(Contributed
by Ivo Lens) |
