I don't think it was Air Europe - but wherein I seem to recall it might have been a BAC1-11 or B737-200 operator.... (DanAir maybe?) but it's so long ago I can't honestly remember. It's a great yarn though !
The one I heard about concerns an Aer Lingus (737-200 I believe) many many moons ago which had a problem with the WXR radar screen (PPI) which was blanking. The crew decided to 're-rack' it in flight (can't remember if they were told by maint or saw an engineer doing it sucessfully earlier in the day) to try and kick it back to life. Problem was that when they pulled it out the removal handle jammed the throttle levers and they could neither remove it or reinstall it or more worringly move the throttles so they had to 'beat it to death' with the crash axe. Don't know how true it is but it was told to us when we were apprentices there.....
Phanstastic - there seems to be a deep ressource of "Urban Legends" for pilots! They found on the same feature as the other ones: impossible situation out of every day situation, extreme outcome and lots of schadenfreude! And it always happens to someone else, if you ask them, they know the same story from the other guys, who told him that the other told him...
Another Dan-Air urban legend I heard was when they were doing kids' visits to the flightdeck in the cruise (remember those ?) when the small boy exclaimed the inevitable "Wow ! And do you have machine guns ?". The skipper would say "sure", and get the kid to touch the control column and press the mike switch, whereupon on cue the flight engineer watching from behind would operate the stick shaker test switch which gave a nice realistic noise and feel. Small boy returns to seat and tells all they let him fire the guns.
Plausible ? Sure hope the FO was guarding the column as well !
OK, allow me to add my two pence worth - back in 1991 I was working at FLS Aerospace, at the same time as Dan-Air was going to the wall.
We had a radar scope in the rotable exchange pool, which went out on loan to Dan's because (allegedly) a disgruntled linie at LGW on hearing that he was about to lose his job, went on board a DA 737 and booted the display.
Whether it's true or not I have no idea, but the rumour was certainly doing the rounds at STN and LGW for a while.
Slightly off topic, I remember jumpseating an Aer Lingus 737 some time in the early 80s. On the back of the flight deck door was a sticker: "Fly this aeroplane green side up".
Another "kid in flightdeck" story from Midland which did happen on one of our 737s. Both pilots in conversation with boys father when orange lights start coming on all over the overhead panel, they look round to see the kid happily pulling CBs on the rear panel. Flightdeck visit terminated rapidly.
Linear Mode
