Originally Posted by
Apron Artist
During my time at Gatwick I had the pleasure (?) of managing the outbound baggage for the Med-View flight to Lagos. A complete horror story of a flight using a knackered 747-400 (TF-AMV) from Air Atlanta Icelandic. Every flight rammed - 20 AKEs (LD3s) and every bag 35+ kgs. Most over 40, record was 49kgs. And the bags absolutely stank and some were oozing what must have been frozen fish juice that was thawing. Disgusting, I'd get home from work and all uniform had to be washed at least twice to remove the last traces of smell. One particular night, for tech reasons 3 bins didn't make it onboard - so those bins were moved to the "Rush Unit" to be re-flighted for the next flight, 3 days later.
By the next night, there were maggots everywhere and the smell beyond anything I've smelled before or since. I was off for a few days after that, but I am led to believe that the 3 bins mysteriously vanished up to LHR for an earlier flight. Lucky them. So many more horror stories from the Med-View days...glad I didn't live in Charlwood.
Unfortunate though that may have been, please remember the poor sods, the cleaners, who had to remove the maggots and the engineers involved in any subsequent inspections. An acknowledgement for their efforts would have been nice.