"well, we'll never do that again"

One recent oops comes to mind but if I remember more, I'll add. Up here in the northwest, caps can be frozen on arrival if its cold. G5 comes in and I go to uncap the lav dump and its stuck... Warmer day so I pull harder assuming its not really frozen on this warm day. Cap flies open and I take a poopy ice shower (vacuum lav so just pure fecal waste falling, no blue juice )... Lesson learned.. Open slow, stand back! You never know what's hiding
 
Calling all line service professionals...
What's the worst "oh crap moment you've had?

I'll start with ours from today.
Brand new global express rolls up. They ask for fuel and lav service. I'm taking care of the fuel and I ask my (stupid)visor if he's ever done a GLEX lav before. He says yup, no problem and we get to work. The stupidvisor proceeds to dump the lav and pump a few gallons of blue juice into the aircraft. After i'm done fueling, the pilot comes to me and asks if the lav has been done yet. I say yes, dumped and blue juiced. The pilot turns away from me and proceeds to rip my stupidvisor a new one. Apparently Global Express lavs don't take blue juice. Doh! Live and learn.
The main problem with putting blue juice in a vacuum toilet through the rinse port is that rinse port actually connects to a little sprinkler inside the tank that's supposed to clean the inside of the tank, including the high level sensor. The blue juice contaminates those sensors, for a while Gulstream was putting stickers that would stain from blue juice and wouldn't warranty sensors that had been contaminated. If the high level sensor is activated the entire system shuts down which, if you can't bypass it, becomes a big problem 4 hours into a 12 hour flight.
 
Knocked a static wick off a turbo commander one time, never bent any metal though lots of my coworkers did..

Got the golf carts to do pretty mean wheelies though, it was a different time in my life.

One of the more fun things we did was on a particularly busy day at MYF for the first Red Bull air races in town we had an overflowing ramp of various GA aircraft. My good buddy and I stayed late and rearranged them into similar make/models. Looked pretty cool the next morning with a row of Cirri, piper alley, line of Cessnas in big-to-little order etc. Wish I still had that picture.
 
The main problem with putting blue juice in a vacuum toilet through the rinse port is that rinse port actually connects to a little sprinkler inside the tank that's supposed to clean the inside of the tank, including the high level sensor. The blue juice contaminates those sensors, for a while Gulstream was putting stickers that would stain from blue juice and wouldn't warranty sensors that had been contaminated. If the high level sensor is activated the entire system shuts down which, if you can't bypass it, becomes a big problem 4 hours into a 12 hour flight.
Why are there not giant placards and incompatible fittings on a vacuum toilet to prevent such tomfoolery?
 
Why are there not giant placards and incompatible fittings on a vacuum toilet to prevent such tomfoolery?
I used to ask questions such as this when in factory training, the instructor would shrug and say "I didn't design it." Perhaps a good co-pilot will find it advantageous to spend the extra 10 minutes with line service as the aircraft is serviced. Honestly, on the road I'd rather all they do is dump it, it can get rinsed properly at home or a service center. I are/was a line guy, there is a reason some folks reach their peak dumping lavs and pumping fuel.
 
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One recent oops comes to mind but if I remember more, I'll add. Up here in the northwest, caps can be frozen on arrival if its cold. G5 comes in and I go to uncap the lav dump and its stuck... Warmer day so I pull harder assuming its not really frozen on this warm day. Cap flies open and I take a poopy ice shower (vacuum lav so just pure fecal waste falling, no blue juice )... Lesson learned.. Open slow, stand back! You never know what's hiding
We had a blow torch for this in the winter, some guys used the piston airplane engine preheater if it was really bad and had leaked.
I had the fortune of dumping a Hawker lav that had been sitting outside for 6 days in the middle of summer. Someone also had pulled the handle before I got there, so I was blessed with a nice hot poop shower when I pulled the donut out.


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We had a blow torch for this in the winter, some guys used the piston airplane engine preheater if it was really bad and had leaked.
I had the fortune of dumping a Hawker lav that had been sitting outside for 6 days in the middle of summer. Someone also had pulled the handle before I got there, so I was blessed with a nice hot poop shower when I pulled the donut out.


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Hawker donuts are just about the biggest gamble in life aren't they.. Would take a Hawker over a pull out lav anyday though. Pc-12 pilot forgot to remove the cap on the lav after installing it at previous FBO.. Pax didn't realize and after the flight, that was one destroyed lav box. Lol
 
You guys aren't getting paid enough for what you do

I got lucky on the last plane I worked on - No one was allowed to use the toilet on the CJ2+ per owner's decree. His wife took a piss once, the resulting crap storm was of biblical proportion. The owner was also the one who wiped everything down and vacuumed the plane.
Cross the belts, throw the covers on and go home.
Best 500/525 job ever.
 
We had a blow torch for this in the winter, some guys used the piston airplane engine preheater if it was really bad and had leaked.
I had the fortune of dumping a Hawker lav that had been sitting outside for 6 days in the middle of summer. Someone also had pulled the handle before I got there, so I was blessed with a nice hot poop shower when I pulled the donut out.


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I'm so thankful the Hawker on our 135 has the no-donut conversion.

You guys aren't getting paid enough for what you do

I got lucky on the last plane I worked on - No one was allowed to use the toilet on the CJ2+ per owner's decree. His wife took a piss once, the resulting crap storm was of biblical proportion. The owner was also the one who wiped everything down and vacuumed the plane.
Cross the belts, throw the covers on and go home.
Best 500/525 job ever.
Yet another thing I hate about the Beechjet we have on our 135. The owners of the plane are pretty good about not using the lav but occasionally a charter customer will use it. Dumbest design ever, the waste container for it sits inside another container which holds the blue juice. Only way you can get the waste container out of the cabin without dripping is wrapping a bag around the thing. Then you get the joy of swishing around the waste to get it out because the opening on it looks like an airplane coffee pot and it won't dump out evenly. :bang:
 
At ACM our lav cart had the donut extractor inside the dump tube so donuts weren't really an issue... Except on the hawker, for some reason it never worked on hawkers and we had to use their tool.

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