Significant side loading caused damage to main gear which in turn caused a tire failure. There may be wing spar involvement, if so a sad end for 701.
I flew the aircraft for Gemini.

I flew the aircraft for Gemini.

First MD11 I ever flew, May 17, 2001, PANC-KLAX, Woody giving IOE from the bunk.....

First MD11 I ever flew, May 17, 2001, PANC-KLAX, Woody giving IOE from the bunk.....

That's too funny. Woody gave me and Mike Belcher IOE from Joburg-Kinshasa-Amsterdam.
Woody is at Tradewinds/Skylease1 as are a few other Geminites.

Wow
My IOE was on 701 PANC--KORD on 06/09/00. Many happy memories of GAC flying.

I bet we could get a whole thread going of Woody/701 stories here, he did my IOE in 701 PVG-MAA-DXB a few years back

Yes I bet we could. A lot folks looked down on us at Gemini. We operated the MD11 for many years and never had a tail strike..... Not many operators can say that....
If 701 is written off its a grand shame......

How many did you have ?

Four. And we hit the entire globe with them. Twelve DC-10-30's too.

My first turbojet left seat, and within a month I was going into Quito at night in thunderstorms.

Gemini was a grand experiment in running a better cargo airline. Worked great until we sold out to the Carlysle Group. They seemed to think that, 9/11 and global downturn aside, we needed to give them their bag of money every month. When the white hats couldn't do it, they fired 'em and brought in the black hats. That's when I pulled the handles.

But man, it was nice there for awhile. I would have been a lifer if Stockbridge had stayed in charge.....

...until we sold out to the Carlysle Group.

Odd you should mention this...we are in preliminaries now with them for funding...new airline. Perhaps we can take the bag and run this time...:}

411A
You should be very careful with the Carlysle Group- if you have any say. They have deep pockets but they eventually brought in a manager to run Gemini who was not familiar with airline/121 ops and we suffered greatly because of that.

Some people feel that outfits like Gemini were 'bottom-feeders' and in some ways they were, but in my 30 plus years of flying I was associated with some of the best, most talented professional crews ever while I was there.

411A
You should be very careful with the Carlysle Group- if you have any say. They have deep pockets but they eventually brought in a manager to run Gemini who was not familiar with airline/121 ops and we suffered greatly because of that.

Isn't is sad how one or two knownothing execs at the top can take a nimble and successful organization with smart motivated people and fly it into the ground in such short order. All over bags of money that none of the smart motivated people will never see.

Many UM's are a conspiracy to screw the customers, employees, shareholders and the public in what ever way will maximise their bonuses:mad:

If those types take over your company, it's time to jump.

For Patrickal,

YES Sir, seconded!!! Am I just a "BOF" or is that sort of stuff becoming more and more prevalent in the airline biz these days (and I don't mean just since the banks meltdown)?

Back to the thread - I don't know if you're reading this Bill, but for the rest of you, a few years back I had the pleasure of "managing" 2 x test flights and subsequent ferries of PtoF converted MD-11s from Asia to Europe. Each was Captained by an ex-Gemini MD-11 (and DC-10, and before that DC-8 driver) and not only was he one of the nicest gentlemen (in the true sense of the word) you could ever wish to meet, but also, IMHO as an engineer with at least some clue as to what goes on at the sharp end, he was one of the best airmen I've ever had the pleasure of working with too.

Happy memories - and all the Gemini a/c I saw always looked pretty smart too.

Krgds
AES

I don't think Carlyle are dissimilar from any other private equity investor - ie they load up the company with debt and expect regular repayments. Without them, they lose control, so make desperate attempts to get money out of the company with new management if circumstances change.

Inappropriate for investments in aviation that are obviously cyclical unless they are investing at the bottow, and with the compounded effect of 9/11 at the time, it must have been a hard time dealing with the cash demands they though were stable. Far more appropriate for a grocery store or manufacturer.

Maybe they will take a more adult approach to the debt this time, 411A.

Off thread topic, but forgive me....

Carlysle had a plan for Gemini - grow the fleet from 8 to 16 planes, show an impressive growth in revenue over a 3-5 year period, then go public.

Would have worked, too - if they had started about 3 years earlier. Trouble was, they invested heavily (mostly the MD-11's) just in time for the implosion after 9/11. We got a little military work after that, but it was never enough - our contracts came from Fedex, and they were looking for work too so they just kept the flying.

(It did not help us that Osama's mother was a major shareholder in Carlysle. The Pentagon was not going to throw a ton of business to us and have the press get ahold of that....)

The postal service was also a rich source of funding in the beginning, that later dried up due to the Fedex postal contract.

Basically the ACMI world got too big too fast, with World Gemini Polar Atlas Evergreen Southern Air all fighting each other over work. Then gas prices went up and killed off the DC-10's.....

411A maybe your timing is better than Gemini's. I'm guessing Carlysle has a similar plan for you - they are not known as long-term investors.

Yes I bet we could. A lot folks looked down on us at Gemini. We operated the MD11 for many years and never had a tail strike..... Not many operators can say that....


4 MD-11's flown for what 8-9 years? Could hardly generate the cycles and hrs to put their operation in the same game to compare their safety record with any MD-11 operator I know of out there. I new some decent pilots at Gemini but also flew with some really shitty ones. One moronic instance was a empty Miami Quito run, 40k feet the whole way there, 20 minutes out I am thinking we are usually descending by now 15 minutes from our eta I am wondering WTF? The MD-11 does not like to slow down when empty, I think I lost a filling as we decended just about the full decent with spped brakes deployed, shitty approach briefing, flew the 6 deg GS all the way to the threshold (could have gone VFR when required) Needless to say the aircraft and it's contents took a beating.

Gemini was a grand experiment in running a better cargo airline. Worked great until we sold out to the Carlysle Group. They seemed to think that, 9/11 and global downturn aside, we needed to give them their bag of money every month. When the white hats couldn't do it, they fired 'em and brought in the black hats. That's when I pulled the handles.

Yeah I was there during the transition peoiod, had that jerk from the Carlylse group blow the same hot air up my arse. Did some reasearch on them, members of the Binladen family as well as several ex presidents (think bush Sr. was one too) were board members. I was in Indoc. during 911. Bottom line was the man they sent over to run things was some schmuck that got thrown a depreciating asset of theirs to cut his teeth and earn a seat at the big table. In other words the company was purchased as a tax writeoff, Stockbridge got out at the right time.

The whole year I spent there was more or less miserable. Just bad timing to join the company, the guys who got on during the Stockbridge era seemed to have a better attitude when I started that I watched go to crap.