Everyone Enjoys a Larf! - Part One
We’re moving into the shortest days of the year and some of us feel down with the lack of sunshine. Others read the newspapers and become glum with the political scene, or the wars overseas or the financial markets. Yet others are having a hard time in their lives for any number of reasons.
We all need a break from the ongoing blah. And we all love to laugh at a good story.
John asked some of our contributors to write about some of the funnier things that have happened to them during their flying careers.
We got an excellent response - enough stories for more than one blog so I’ll include a few of them here and provide Part 2 later on in the winter. We hope you enjoy reading about the lighter side of being a pilot!
The $100 Bet
This story was provided by Captain Chris Kriechbaum.
If someone asked me what was one of my more humorous stories, one that comes to mind for me is one when I was flying for Air New Zealand as a captain on the Boing 737-200 flying domestically in New Zealand. It was in the days where low visibility operations were not as formalised as they are today.
I was flying a relatively early morning sector out of Christchurch to Auckland, a sector typically full of business people off to their prearranged meetings, their interviews or site visits. It was late Autumn with a clear sky and little wind, perfect conditions for fog. As most of us know fog can be incredibly fickle, one moment clear skies, the next moment almost zero visibility. It can roll in and out frustrating ATC, pilots and passengers alike.
On this particular morning fog was keeping Christchurch airport closed. Our crew arrived at the departure gate and we had a discussion with the Customer Service Agent at the gate about the weather and our departure prospects. There had already been a reasonable delay for the passengers and the CSA mentioned there was a feeling of frustration with some of those in the lounge.
Because the conditions weren’t sufficiently good to take off we requested the passengers still be held in the gate lounge so as not to inconvenience them and hope that the fog would lift. We didn’t feel it was appropriate to cancel the flight at that stage. We went onboard and preflighted the aircraft and were ready to go at a moment’s notice.
After probably 30 minutes, by listening to ATC and getting wind and temperature updates, we got a ‘sniff’ that there could be a slight lifting and so asked the CSAs to board the aircraft. One businessman was obviously not impressed that we were being boarded when all he could see was essentially nothing - the airport was still closed, the fog still looked very thick. Perhaps he wanted the flight to be cancelled so he had certainty, that I will never know.
Anyway, with the aircraft fully boarded and the crew preparing for departure a cabin crew member entered the flight deck and gave me a note, this note was from the ‘agitated businessman’. The note advised us that he thought we were wasted all our time by boarding and that he bet me $100 that we would not be able to depart. I put the note aside and really didn’t give it much thought, I was more concerned with the operation of the aircraft and ensuring a safe operation.
We requested start up and taxi but I asked the co-pilot to request that we be allowed to taxi onto the runway at its mid-point and then back track along the runway to the threshold. This is something that cannot be done in the current more mature Low Visibility Operations, which control operations at bigger airports in times of low visibility.
As we back tracked I ‘stood up’ the thrust levers to their mid-point, at the same time keeping my feet on the brakes to control the taxi speed. This provided some thrust, but more importantly it provided some heat and mixing to the air in the area where we were potentially going to take off, it was an ‘old trick’ I had learnt while flying in the mid-west of the US in piston twins a number of years before. This strategy is risky, as it can go both ways, it can partially clear the air of the fog, but also it could have made the take-off zone’s fog even thicker, but as they say “nothing ventured nothing gained!”. Lady luck was with us on that day.
We completed all our checks as we were taxing, did the 180 degree turn at the threshold and proceeded to count the number of runway edge lights we could see. If we had the required number and hence the required take-off visibility, we could depart. We counted exactly what we needed, got our take-off clearance and off we went.
As we climbed through 20,000 feet the same cabin attended entered the cockpit with another note and a $100 bill, the agitated businessman was obviously happy! I returned the note, along with the $100, saying we were only doing our job, but with a very satisfied (some may say smug) feeling!
😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁
The Astonishing Powers of the Aircraft Commander!
This story was provided by Captain Finn Zwager.
While on an A320 ACMI operation in Europe the purser came to the cockpit in cruise and reported that she had left her mobile phone in the galley during boarding and it was now missing. She was very upset as it had likely been stolen by one of the passengers. Although I didn’t think it would make any difference, I promised her I would do a stern PA.
Just before top of descent I spoke to the passengers explaining that disappointingly one of them had decided it was OK to steal the purser’s phone. As this was not acceptable, I had informed the police at our destination to meet the aircraft and they would deal with the matter accordingly. That was an outright lie as I was about to land in Germany, and I had not called the police as I was sure they had more important things to do then locate someone’s missing phone. I just hoped the PA would scare the thief into leaving the phone on board discretely.
After landing we were assigned a remote stand which meant the area surrounding the aircraft was clearly visible to all passengers. Lo and behold there were two police vans present as well as several uniformed agents looking, well, like German police. The law enforcement team walked up the boarding stairs and commenced to check every passenger’s travel documents before letting them disembark the aircraft. Needless to say, pretty soon one of the passengers handed the purser her phone stating they had ‘found it under their seat’.
While many of the passengers must have been impressed by the apparent power of an aircraft commander to call out an impressive army of justice, I knew it had all been an extremely fortunate set of circumstances where the police had only arrived in drones looking for illegal immigrants rather than stolen phones!
😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁
Yep! It’s all good -perfect visibility!
What the Fog!!
This story was provided by Captain Arthur Gatland (More a seat gripper than funny but a good story nonetheless)
It was another dark and stormy night across much of New Zealand. The year was around 1998, and I was a Boeing 767 Captain. On this particular night I was the flying pilot, with a First Officer in support. Our short flight was Christchurch to Auckland at around 2200hrs. What made it interesting was that Wellington and Ohakea were closed with bad weather, and Auckland weather was marginal. Fortunately Christchurch weather was good and forecast to remain so. We had enough fuel to have a few approaches at Auckland and return to Christchurch if necessary.
This was before the innovation of Cat III autoland approaches in low visibility. We were able to do practice autolands in VMC (visual conditions) which if I recall correctly required around 1500ft cloud base. Auckland was reporting marginal conditions with a cloud base of around 200 feet.
However as we took off from Christchurch I thought I saw a few wisps of mist forming. Was it my imagination? No…. passing 20,000ft in the climb we were advised that Christchurch was now closed with fog.
So now we had a situation where every B767 operable airport in NZ was closed apart from Auckland, which was marginal.
My First Officer, sounding quite distressed said “What are we going to do?”
My response was “Easy. We fly to Auckland, fly an ILS approach, and if we can’t see anything we will simply do an Autoland in the fog.”
My F/O said “We can’t do that! That would be illegal!”
I said “Have you got a better idea?”
The silence suggested the answer was in the negative…
My story is that we “saw the runway lights at Auckland exactly at the minimum of 200 feet, your Honour” so we landed safely.
😬😁😬😁😬😁😬😁😬😁
