Ooooer, look at all them birdies.

[Wilmslow]

I used to be in the TA at RAF Lyneham air despatching in Hercules planes. Working for a building society in Swindon was a dreary existence.

One Saturday I was working on the drop zone, where we wait for the Hercules and crew above to despatch the pallets, and collect them up.

I saw a glider just taking off at the point of the Hercules coming over – Hercules pilot takes evasive action, with a few choice words coming over the radio.

As he makes a second attempt, a Buzzard goes into the path of the plane. Next thing I hear is the pilot screaming ‘Bird strike, bird strike’. The photo after saw a load of blood and feathers and a huge hole in the wing of the plane.

There were some very ashen faced people around the base for the rest of the day!

Best flight was when we had a load of p1ssed up scousers on a 7am flight, and the pilot declared it a full load test flight giving it big licks and chucking the plane around. Spew city. The minibus retrieving them lost them on the airfield as they were all flaked out in the long grass.

Happy days.

[ilovehr]

Pilot shennanigans

Best flight was when we had a load of p1ssed up scousers on a 7am flight, and the pilot declared it a full load test flight giving it big licks and chucking the plane around. Spew city. The minibus retrieving them lost them on the airfield as they were all flaked out in the long grass.

Happy days.

A friend of mine is a commecial pilot and he worked for Air Europe in the 80's. His flights we mostly to the med ferrying pissed up scousers off to the Balearics - notice the recurring theme?

One of the biggest gripes for pilots and cabin crew is when passengers stand up and start unloading the overhead lockers before the aircraft is stationary on the stand. It's both dangerous (many aircraft accidents are collisions at airports...) and realy annoying for the crew and the more patient passengers.

I don't know if it's the same for all airlines but on his flights the cabin crew would give a couple of knocks on the flight deck door when this was happening. He simply gave a quick tap on the brakes causing most if not all of the standing passengers to fall over.

They would often hold sweeps to see how many victims there would be!

If he was really pissed off (hungover) he'd taxi all the way from the runway to the stand with the nose wheel on the catseyes...thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud......

Happy days.....