Oops at Luton!
This happened tonight 10th December 2003 Around 17:00
Picture the scene.
Fog is causing chaos across most of South East England with Stansted and Heathrow operating at vastly reduced capacities. There is one small island of clear in all this. Miraculously Luton (normally a fog magnet) is clear. So diverts are coming in from all directions. At one point I counted 7 planes inbound or vectoring either side of the Runway 26 approach. The aprons are crammed with biz jets and airliners that have set down earlier in the afternoon. Tower and Ground are working flat out with inbounds spaced at 7 miles and Ground desperately trying to clear the backlog of planes holding by the fire station. Thus keepng the runway clear.
Plane just been instructed to vacate right and join the queue when this cuts across ground...
Unidentified Pilot:
"Welcome to this ........ flight to Madrid. This is Capt........ and I'll be flying you to Madrid this evening. I apologise for the long delay to this flight. This was caused by a first officer becoming un available and the person you have just seen walking up the steps is the stand in who has just made his way from Gatwick. You can imagine the delay caused by driving around the M25 on a night like this. We are just going to spend the next five minutes catching up on paper work..............continues for next 3 minutes."
Unidentified voice when finally the pilot releases his finger from the transmit button:
"Now try that talking to the passengers"
Unidentified Pilot:
muffled voice "sorry ....)
Unidentified voice:
"gee, that was the longest one I've heard!"
The guilty party then waited a good 15 minutes (until a lot of the planes that had heard him had dissapeared off frequency) before apologising to ground. Who was very pragmatic about it and offered sympathy to the pilot concerned.
So own up. Was it a PPRuNer?
DeepC
(In my car waiting for my wife to arrive from Holland)