ANZEIGE
Mal ein paar Perlen aus einer anderen Zeit, nein, aus einer anderen Welt von a.net:
Ty134A meinte:Remember those days??? "Captain, what are those auto parts in the forward hold?" "Those are mine, about 3to." "But Sir, we are way out of trim!" "Yes, but it is Ilyushin and has a small wheel at the back, so do not worry my son!" "But we are nosewards out of trim, and about 5to to heavy, excluding your auto parts!" "Aaaah I understand, please tell the tanker we take 7to more fuel, and add another 2to taxi fuel for your calculations!" "Sir, we can not do this!" "No problem, tell the girls to get you a glass of Tarkhun and we will do the rest, just use the aft hold for bags, and if they don't fit, load them into the middle galley! - Natasha, Taaaaaaash, we will load in the galley, free up some space and put your bag to us!" I will never forget the good old days... I always lmfao when a pic discusses an lmc with his f/o, -25kg, +85kg...hahaha and they add al this onto their tablets and check for the cg...hahahaha no auto parts any more, no mashinery, no TVs, no tyres... how could the industry have lost all this romance to it wihtin what, 2-3 decades?
Ty134A meinte:Unforgettable also a Ukrainian TU5 during inspection: "Are you the captain?" "Depends on the girls flying today, who the f@&? are you?" "Safa inspection, sir we have a problem with one of your tyers!" "Impossible, we have very many!" "There are already some layers visible on one" "Yes, but Tupolev tyers have 3 layers!" "We already count 5 and maybe even a 6th!" "ok, so you say we have 6 layers of rubber on our tyers, and we have 14 of them tyers, so we have a lot of layers left, Mishka, turn on the APU, we go now!"
Ty134A meinte:on another occasion, tu-134 were already rare in western europe, there was an inspection of a tu-134. and for whatever reason it had one of (i believe it was altimeter) it's instruments marked inop with a big red X. whatever the reason for this was, the inspection saw it and came to the conclusion that flying in this condition was not allowed. on the plane there was 15 minutes of discussion why maintenance marked something inop as actually being inop, but never a single second the circumstance that it was inop (nobody cared about that). so they needed this part, otherwise no flying. now since CSA was getting rid of their TU3 and malev as well, there were no parts around, and bringing one from RU, BY, UA or Grusya was also difficult and would take ages - and nobody able to make a decision. also one has to say that these inspections were mostly politically motivated. so the inspectors were glad to ground another TU3... but out of nowhere a delayed other TU3 pulled up the neighbouring parking position.
so one of the crew members went to the captain for money. they were always dispatched with cash for fuel and landing fees. he took a few hundred dollars and left the plane. usually TU3 crews were PIC, F/O, navigator, 3-4 in cabin and one "airline guy" or engineer. this dude left the plane with the money. meanwhile the two safa inspectors filed the paper work in the cabin, which is pretty far from the flight deck, with the big galley in between.
after a few minutes the airline dude came back with an instrument and a few cables. now tupolevs were not exactly plug and play, but with a bit of understanding and if able to match colours, it is possible to change an instrument. so after a while the CPT told the inspectors that their repair was completed and that they would now leave.
to all's surprise there was another instrument installed, and the malfunctioning was removed - safa checked the serial number. nobody could possibly figure out what just had happened. but they were fine with it - only needed the licence of the "mechanic". after half an hour a fax arrived (no e-mail back then) and they asked him what that was. the airline dude showed them his engineer degree and his mechanics license - all in russian. the inspectors were fine with that, but wanted to know where they got the spare part from and who licensed it. the airline dude pointed the finger towards the meanwhile blasting down the runway TU3 that was parked beside them before: we bought it from there, 850 USD.
and after translating the licences of the mechanic, it turned out that the airline dude was an engineer for agriculture and a mechanic for samara sputnik cars. but the tushka was already airborne at that moment. also, since it was summer, one of the older flight attendants got intoxicated by alcohol and had to fly as a passenger - this dude spent the whole 4 hours of inspection drinking a whole bottle of duty free 1L whisky.
those are the unforgettable moments in ones aviation life... compare that to now.
Phosphorus meinte:Well, if we are into stories -- one I would love to share is that many times in the 1990's and early 2000's in ex-USSR, crew would notice me in the terminal (I was flying in suit and tie, company protocol) and approach (sometimes the captains themselves) and would ask me, where am I going. The reason was -- they could basically smuggle me onboard -- via buddy passes, or some other mechanism, at a price lower than the regular fare. Obviously, the transaction was supposed to happen in cash, and no receipts.
I was flying at company expense, so couldn't participate -- tickets and receipts were required. The crews were disappointed -- those small Babyflots often owed crews a lot of back salaries, and sale of buddy passes was apparently one of the ways for crew to keep food on the table.
Both crews and passengers could be quite hilarious, those times. I remember boarding a Yak-42, flying domestic in Ukraine. An English speaker was surprised with the unfamiliar type, while looking around, and made a comment about instruments of the aircraft. His guide answered, in a heavily accented English, "but there are no instruments. Everything is manual, true Soviet equipment, reliable and sturdy, nothing to break", or something close. The English speaker was very quiet for the rest of the flight.
An ex-colleague switched jobs. His new employer, a multinational with a very comprehensive health and life insurance policy, restricted his flying ability -- An-24 was a banned type, from his insurer point of view. At the time, this was a dominant short- and medium-range airplane all over ex-USSR. Poor guy was stuck taking trains most of the time.