Things at the airport that make you go hmmmm....

Roger Roger said:
Both sleds and Cherokees are prone to nose baggage doors popping open if the pilot isn't meticulous about latching them properly. Haven't had it on one of our sleds yet but on the Cherokee it dang near destroys the fiberglass door. Still not as bad as a chieftain nose bag coming open though.
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I have heard that if the Chieftain door comes open it is a very serious event.
 
I once watched a guy takeoff in a C172 with his tow bar still attached. He completed two touch & gos before he realized anything was wrong.
 
ASpilot2be said:
There are a lot of things out there that make you go hmmm. Especially this time of year. Landing today there were a bunch of people standing next to the runway. On roll out I realized they all had shotguns. Must be duck season!
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Or they are making that redneck TV show. Were they getting out of a camo G5?
 
desertdog71 said:
Stopped for fuel in Holbrook, AZ. Greeted by men in orange jumpsuits and one very round deputy with a shotgun. Turns out they were the FBO staff.
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I nearly got stranded there once because the stupid credit car machine wouldn't come online. I kinda hate that place.
 
JJ8Flyer said:
I call bs.. trolling
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Yeah, thats a tough one to wrap my head around. If you did a proper walk around, you'd trip over the tow bar checking your prop for cracks as well as checking that your tires are good to go. In the rare event that your an idiot and missed it, as soon as you taxi you should hear the metal dragging or the tow bar bouncing off the tire hitting the underside of the airplane and know something doesnt sound right. Depending how long the bar is, as soon as you taxi over a separation on the ramp that thing is gonna wedge itself in the crack and your gonna know its there. For example, take a stick and put it front of you and hold one end and let the tip of the stick touch the sidewalk. Now run with the stick leading the way like your pushing a push broom. BAM, you hit a crack in the sidewalk and that stick breaks. Now when you land (thats if you even make it off the ground), the tow bar is going to touch down before the front gear which would likely cause it to bend back behind the front gear causing some potentially severe damage. Then again, there are some really stupid ass people out there who have no business flying an airplane but this is a hard one to believe.
 
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SeanD said:
Yeah, thats a tough one to wrap my head around. If you did a proper walk around, you'd trip over the tow bar checking your prop for cracks as well as checking that your tires are good to go. In the rare event that your an idiot and missed it, as soon as you taxi you should hear the metal dragging or the tow bar bouncing off the tire hitting the underside of the airplane and know something doesnt sound right. Depending how long the bar is, as soon as you taxi over a separation on the ramp that thing is gonna wedge itself in the crack and your gonna know its there. For example, take a stick and put it front of you and hold one end and let the tip of the stick touch the sidewalk. Now run with the stick leading the way like your pushing a push broom. BAM, you hit a crack in the sidewalk and that stick breaks. Now when you land (thats if you even make it off the ground), the tow bar is going to touch down before the front gear which would likely cause it to bend back behind the front gear causing some potentially severe damage. Then again, there are some really stupid ass people out there who have no business flying an airplane but this is a hard one to believe.
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Wheel pants = tow bar won't touch the ground.
 
Derg said:
Funny story, I flew with a captain out of NYC years ago that thought he was the "end all, be all, SkyGod" that wouldn't take suggestions and expected to micromanage every part of the operation.

Fine, I can play this game.

We pushback, the tug driver says "Clear to start" and I ask, "How many do you want?" as we often single-engine taxi the 767.

"I'll tell you how many I want when I call for them"

Ok! I know where this is headed. This is a game I can play and a sneaky bastard like me always wins.

We complete pushback, the tug driver is cleared to disconnect and he salutes us as he heads back to the terminal area.

"Flaps 5, call for taxi"

"Ramp, SouthernJets 123 ready to taxi"

"Taxi up to kilo kilo short of alpha, ground .9"

"Kilo Kilo, point 9 at the top of the alley"

Captain advances power, clearly nothing happens.

So I just sit there, waiting for him to call for an engine start as he fiddles with the parking brake and hasn't realized that (a) it's very quiet (b) the engines don't advance when he applies power and then… realizes that he hasn't called for an engine start.

So now there are about three other jets behind us, all bitching about how we're sitting there clogging the ramp without our engine started.

So he calls for one, but since it was summer and we had (somewhat) sunken into the ramp, one engine won't do it and now the relief pilot says, "Maybe we should start the other engine!" and I reply, "If the captain wanted a two-engine taxi, he would have asked for it!" (clearly in jest).

So then he commands, "Start #2".

"Gladly".

Captains, your fellow cockpit crew members really want you to look good and do a good job for you. Let them. Besides, you get all the mythical SkyGod "airline glory" anyway.
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Man this is brilliant!!
 
Derg said:
Gracias. True story bro.

I don't subscribe to the 'infallible crew member'/"SkyGod" concept. We all make mistakes, some big, some small, it's a matter of how you manage threats and errors. If you convey that you're a SkyGod, oh hell bro, game on.
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(1) Don't be too busy trying to be perfect that you aren't perfect on things that matter (heading, altitude, airspeed, configuration).
(2) You've either made the mistakes already, or you're going to — it's a question of how you managed them.
 
@SeanD I never saw it, but I remember hearing a story from one of the senior CFI/II/ATP/ABCDEFG's here on the field who once saw someone do two complete touch and goes with one of the hand tow bars that come with a Cessna 172.
 
@SeanD I never saw it, but I remember hearing a story from one of the senior CFI/II/ATP/ABCDEFG's here on the field who once saw someone do two complete touch and goes with one of the hand tow bars that come with a Cessna 172.
 
z987k said:
It's in the prop arc or really close to it iirc. Amf had extra latches on them.
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Out of the prop arc actually. From what I understand the problem is twofold. First, anything in the nose baggage tends to go out through the LH prop which of course has some rather negative consequences and second very anecdotally the nose door being open appears to cause some rather problematic airflow issues. There is some rumor that even with both engines spinning the drag of an open nose can render a fully loaded aircraft unable to climb though I find that hard to believe. I've also heard it rumored that it messes with the airflow over the tail which causes performance or control problems. Either way more than one chieftain has gotten bent up because of a nose door popping open though to my knowledge it's not been an issue since the AD was issued. Which the latching mechanism is quite robust if properly maintained.
 
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