Originally Posted by
SASless
Jobsworth at a civil airport....oh please do go on!
While towing a Huey Helicopter...Tug with flashing lights, Head Lights, and two of us assisting the driver.....me holding the Tail Stinger of the helicopter to prevent the tail end of the skid landing gear from dragging.....the Airport Plod accosted me for not having a Hi-Vis Vest about my person.
The explanation that there would scant chance of me gietting hit due to that small thing I was holding in my hands first getting in the way did not sit well with Plod who insisted the operation stop immediately....smack in the center of the Ramp until I was suitably attired....posing a much greater risk meant nothing to him.
He got very perplexed when I asked how I was to go fetch said Hi-Vis Vest....walk without one to the hangar to fetch one.....drop the tow bar and ride the Tug leaving the helicopter in the middle of the ramp and stopping airplane traffic until we could return and move it....me stay beside the aircraft and send the Tug and the other guy.....or just use some commonsense and continue what we were doing and swear on my Sainted Mother's Grave never to commit such a similar sin ever again. Watching him ponder those options with wrinkled brow and his finger to his lip....and not knowing what to say was a pleasure I shall have to atone for one day. Finally, a radio call to him from some voice....asking him why the helicopter was not moving stirred him to tell us to continue as is....and off he strode.
They do live among us!
Sounds like Sumburgh in the Shetlands. Divert in tech, pax unloaded to terminal. Aircraft is shutdown, but unknowingly INSIDE THE RED LINE OF DEATH, where company base is outside. I walk up to base to use phone, walk back down again, grabbed by the Dragon Lady, what do I think I am doing, I can’t just walk over a red line on the ground like that, I have to go to be searched. Once that’s done, she asks how the engineers are going to get to the aircraft. Er walk? It’s about 30 yds.
No no, they have to be searched, and all their kit and tools too. They bring them out and are “searched” there and then, by the search manny who has been summoned. They walk the 30 yds, one of them realises he’s left a bag on the ground, and steps back over the line to get it. You’d think he’s trying to penetrate the cordon around Air Force One the way she went off. She made him wait while not only this bag, which had already just been searched, was searched
again, but he had to be searched again too.
Then one had to go back for another tool. Stuff this, aircraft is pushed over the red line on to the sane side so they can work on it without this nonsense. I need to go talk to my pax, but I have unwittingly strayed over the line. I have to be searched again, but search manny has wandered off, and she can’t do it so we have to wait for him to come back, then she escorts me into the terminal via some labyrinth route that avoids the single door between airside and the passenger lounge*, then threatens me with all sorts of retribution if I were to try to go back airside without going to see her highness first. No dramas says I, I’ll just go outside up the road. After the third degree about how thoroughly the company staff will inspect my ID and search my body cavities on arrival in our own company base, this is permitted (not sure how she was going to stop me).
Aircraft deemed totally tech, new aircraft dispatched to pick up passengers, but how are we going to get their bags from aircraft #1 to aircraft #2. Apparently, the pax must walk up to our company base, retrieve bags from aircraft #1, carry them back down to terminal and go through security again. Like f*ck they are, passengers were boarded there, aircraft taxied 20 yds further up the apron, but most importantly OVER THE RED LINE, where we moved the bags from #1 to #2, smiling at her while she stood there shaking with impotent rage.
All this at a small airport in the Shetlands, which was protected on all sides by an impenetrable barrier comprising a 3 foot wooden fence. Later, she tried to get entry to company base to complain about our seeming insouciance for her security empire. The staff there demanded her ID before they would even let her through the door. She didn’t have it. They threw her off company property. Excellent.
* if you went at the weekend when she wasn’t on, you could go from airside to lounge just by opening the door. To come the other way, you just knocked, and the staff would let you through..