Employee Trapped in the Alaska Airlines Cargo Hold

MikeD said:
What if the guy banging on the floor had been thought to be a terrorist about to bring down the plane? And if the pilot had been an FFDO? And he perceived a threat to the aircraft and began shooting through the floorboard in order to terminate the threat.

:D
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I would hope that they're not dumb enough to ... never mind.
 
This isn't the first time this has happened, and likely won't be the last. Delta had this happen in 1987 at Montgomery, AL, but luckily the ramper wasn't asleep and was heard banging on the floor during engine start and pushback.
 
I got an email three weeks ago about the same thing...just didn't hit media streamline because the ramper was banging and screaming as they were pushing the plane back. Almost started taxiing until passengers said something. Now I got this email and a safety bulletin attached also. I bet next year when I'm not a ramper they'll have another training module about looking in bins before closing them. The bigger the airports though, the less the rampers tend to care.
 
Yeah, they definitely need to start looking in the bins, as long as they still let rampers sleep in there. They just need a wake up policy.
 
Maybe if they just have everyone hold hands that will keep this from happening? Or, they could have a long rope that everyone is tethered to.
 
We had a guy almost die in an AirTran cargo bin after falling asleep. The aft bin was unpressurized, and the rampers frequently took a nap back there waiting on the bags. One guy apparently fell asleep and they closed the door on him. As they were taxiing out for takeoff, he woke up and realized that he was in an unpressurized bin and panicked. He started banging on the wall hoping someone would hear him, but then he did something stupid: he lit a cigarette and held it up to the smoke detector to get it to go off, thinking that the crew would pay attention to it when the message popped up in the cockpit. Only problem is that the crew definitely paid attention, and they were about to blow the halon bottles when the aft FA called up and said she heard someone banging on the wall. Had she called a few seconds later, that would have been a suffocated ramper.

Moral of the story: if you're a ramper trapped in a cargo bin, don't try to set off the smoke detector to get attention. You'll probably die.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
Moral of the story: if you're a ramper trapped in a cargo bin, don't try to set off the smoke detector to get attention. You'll probably die.
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A professor that flew for the Air Force told us a story about a guy who did this to pigs. They were cargo pilots and had tons of pigs in the back cargo bin and the pigs started to fart as they were climbing so it set off the smoke detector. Crew did their procedure and when they landed on the ground and opened the bin they said all you could smell was the fart with a bunch of dead pigs.
 
"I woke up when a bag hit me in the head."
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