Everyone Enjoys a Larf – Part Two

Golly! August already! Those in the north will be warming up nicely but those of us in the south still have some teeth chattering mornings to get through yet! The lack of bright sun can dim the mood over time so we thought it was about time to bring to you part two of the blogs dedicated to pilot stories. I hope they brighten your day in lieu of the sun.

I say PAWLI, You say PAWLI

This first story shows how pilots can be divided by a common native language – English. We know that all flight comms are conducted in English, no matter where you are on the planet. But one thing wasn’t taken into account when this rule was imposed – accent! And it can be understood that someone speaking English as second language may have a strong accent but what about when native English speakers can’t understand each other!

Captain Cameron Healey flies for Horizon Airlines, based in the US Northwest. He’s a kiwi. He’s lived in the States for decades.

He recalls – rather vividly – he was on his first operating experience or OE1 as an FO on the E175 and ATC cleared the flight to a reporting point enroute called PAWLI. He repeated back the instruction, as you do, but was then startled to hear “Negative” and a repeat of the instruction to proceed to reporting point PAWLI. Thinking the ATC hadn’t heard his last transmission clearly, he repeated back, again, the message. Bizarrely, he got “Negative” and the same instruction repeated back to him in a somewhat exasperated voice from the controller.

Ummm… what’s going on?

Cameron’s Training Captain looked over at him with a quizzical look. She couldn’t understand why the controller didn’t seem to be hearing Cameron very well, either. For a third time, Cameron repeated back the instructions to head to PAWLI, and for a third time, in almost a shout, the controller firmly said “Negative!” And once more repeated the instruction. By this time the Training Captain was trying her best not to laugh as Cameron stumbled through the ‘correct’ annunciation for PAWLI. How did he navigate this accent conundrum?

In a flash, Cameron had a solution. He repeated back the instruction using a strong imitation of an American accent - "Roger Horizon2175. Cleared direct Papa Alpha, Whisky, Lima, India" 🙂.

The controller remained silent.

The next two stories are provided by Captain Finn Zwager.

ALL THE TALK

Upon retracting the landing gear after takeoff from Tenerife in the Canary island on a B757 a fault occurred indicating a hydraulic failure. It was soon clear there was a system leak and that the gear would not retract. The Captain, who had completed a geography degree while on furlough from his previous airline, seemed to busy himself not only arranging a quick return, but also ensuring there were hotel rooms for the passengers all the while informing them about his efforts over the PA... I was left to deal with the QRH which to me seemed a tad more important than hotel rooms. All ended well and we were safely back on the ground soon enough and then towed to the stand. We spent the night on the island at the same hotel as our passengers while engineers and spare part were flown out. The next day we all headed out to the airport where the passengers and cabin crew waited at the terminal while the Captain and I plus the engineers worked at the aircraft. Several hours passed as the repair job took much longer than expected. The station manager then reported that the passengers were starting a riot and coming close to assaulting the cabin crew. Mind you, these were hungover charter holiday passengers who had spent their very last cent the day prior and by now had their screaming kids running wild for hours. The captain decided it was my job to calm down the crowds as he was too busy with the technical problem so off to the terminal I went.

Erm… Hi… I’m here to calm you down…

Standing on top of a table I managed to sooth most of the nerves by explaining that it really wouldn’t take much longer and besides, as pilot and engineers, we would never get onto the aircraft ourselves if we thought it wasn’t safe to fly. I hadn’t counted on the one truck driver who knew about hydraulics and who had already figured out that what was taking so long was ensuring there was no air left in the hydraulic system after refilling it. Indeed, the engineers told us that, with the tools they had available, there was no absolute guarantee they could bleed off enough air to ensure everything would work perfectly. It was only because most passengers lost interest when the discussion with the truck driver became quite technical, that I managed to get this heckler to shut up.

The gear retracted on the first go, although it did seem to take much longer than usual!

The same captain was so found of PA’s and sharing his geographical knowledge that he once gave a detailed description of the local area over the PA shortly before descent, with me listening to the whole thing in horror while using the toilet*. When I returned to the flightdeck, ATC seemed most annoyed with us not answering their calls. Thankfully this was well before September 11 and no Airforce interceptors appeared.

*Going to the loo before TOD is sometimes called a 'go-around-pee': You don't really need it right now, but when the unexpected happens and you get radar vectored for ages or need to go-around and/or divert you are mighty glad you did!

AVERTING A CERTAIN DISASTER

While talking about toilets. After spending considerable time on general aviation aircraft without toilets flying over East Africa, territory where you need them most, both because there aren’t many on the ground either and the quality of food meant having the runs wasn’t at all uncommon, I found myself commanding a B777 into Dhaka one day with plenty of onboard toilets to choose from.

Timing is everything however, and at around 10,000 feet on approach my bowels decided I was not going to make it to an accident-free landing unless urgent intervention measures were taken. We arranged to enter a holding pattern and I fled to the bathroom.

Pilot Incapacitation

The weight relieved from my insides roughly equalled the amount of fuel burnt in while the hold and our landing performance calculation remained valid. The old Dhaka ATC logs still have a B777 holding short of the airport due to an unknown technical issue. Declaring a MAYDAY due to pilot incapacitation as the book suggested had seemed somewhat over the top.

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD

Captain Chris Kriechbaum recalls some of his earlier flying jobs before he started airline flying. These two snippets will set your hair on end!

There is an old saying that “flying is hours and hours of sheer boredom followed by moments of sheer terror”. However, flying is also full of stories of the unusual, the unexpected and occasionally the humorous.  I’ve personally flown a deceased person at night where I was the only person on the aircraft, tracking around thunder and avoiding the lightning, at times it felt I was in a horror movie.

For your protection, pilot!

I’ve also transported explosives in 44-gallon drums (there was only a kilo of explosive, but the drums were full of packing and solid CO2 to keep the explosive ‘stable’) where I had to crawl over the drums to get to the cockpit. The contract also meant I had to carry a hand gun – who knows how things could have played out if the explosives became unstable or I ever got ‘hijacked’!

“WHOOP! WHOOP!”

Captain Arthur Gatland recalls a sudden heart in the mouth moment in his earlier airline years.

It was a dark and stormy night (as my Dad used to say as an introduction to many of his stories.) In this case I was a First Officer on a B737. It was my sector as pilot flying, from Christchurch to Wellington. We were descending in rain over Cape Campbell on the way to Wellington, when passing through 6000 feet the radio altimeter caught my eye as it flickered and started unwinding through 2000 feet above terrain. A second later I heard "Whoop! Whoop! Pull up! Pull up!"

Without hesitating more than a millisecond, I applied full thrust and pulled back into a steep climb. The captain’s hands did the same about one microsecond after mine. At 10,000 feet we confirmed with ATC that we were in fact in the correct place and resumed our radar vectors to descend and land at Wellington.

We found out later that one of the cabin crew who had been walking down the aisle fell to her hands and knees with the increased G-Force. I said sorry but she said "Please do not apologise! That is exactly what we want you to do!" Looking back, I am very pleased we didn’t hesitate at all in taking recovery action, and that we waited until we were at a safe altitude to ascertain whether it was a spurious warning or not. I am reminded of a similar incident at another airline years ago, where the tech crew receiving a similar warning on an instrument approach. Unfortunately, the pilot's response was to say "Shut up Gringo" to the American-accented terrain warning, just seconds before the aircraft hit the ground killing everyone on board.

And a bonus story from me…

TROUBLE BREWING IN THE CABIN

Sometimes, as flight attendants, we would be gutted to find that we had been rostered onto a Trans-Tasman rugby flight. A duty where we would have to deal with drunkenness (back in the days when CAA rules about drunk passengers were seen by the airline more to be… ‘guidelines’ rather than to be obeyed – Traffic staff were even known to carry on to the aircraft people so drunk they couldn’t walk on themselves!) which then brought on wholesale molestation of the mainly female crew – both in actions and words. The passengers were rowdy and temperamental – whether their team won or lost.

But we had ways and means to control the situation.

Don’t mess with the Flight Attendants!

If the passengers were consuming too much alcohol, we wouldn’t take the cart through the cabin. They would have to come down the back and ask. Although we were never allowed to decline giving alcohol to anyone, we had ways to sneakily reduce alcohol intake.

Those that were drinking spirits with mixers were given a glass of mixer with a very small amount of spirit poured on top - no one noticed the difference. Problematic beer drinkers would be given a tin, but it wasn’t opened for them (as it should have been) and when they opened it, the pre-shaken can sprayed beer all over them and their seat mates. The beer drinker was suddenly very unpopular.

On one flight we had supporters from two competing teams and the atmosphere was decidedly testy and animosity was growing as the flight proceeded. The five hosties taking care of economy (on the B767) had bit of a discussion about it in the rear galley as to how to calm the situation and one bright spark had a brilliant idea.

On stage in the aisle

Two of us took a toilet roll each and slowly and dramatically walked backwards up the aisle deliberately looking at every passenger in the eye without saying anything, all the time unwinding the toilet paper leaving a large white streamer lying in the aisle all the way down to the rear toilets. The cabin grew quiet as perplexed passengers tried to guess what was going on.

Once we reached the front of the cabin (overwing), we both paused and held the remains of the toilet roll aloft before ceremoniously tearing the streamer off it. We then gave the thumbs up to two crew waiting down the back. All heads swivelled to look what was going on at the back and the rear crew picked up their end of the streamer and disappeared from view.

Suddenly, the toilets flushed loudly, and the streamers shot down the aisles seemingly at the speed of light. It took the passengers a second or two to work out what had happened then a loud guffaw ricocheted around the cabin and the animosity of a few minutes ago had evaporated.

Flight Attendants 1, murder and mayhem 0.