Was once on a positioning flight with a well known carrier not long after they had started trading. The AC was an early model 737 with the usual oil leak on the side of the cowling. Shortly after take off the ground engineer I was travelling with said " you used to fly these things, do they normally leak as badly as that?" I looked out of the window and saw the normal oil leak was now a river. We both hit the call buttons at the same time and up came a young lady who asked what we wanted. We pointed out the problem and asked her to let the chap in the front left seat know. Her response "There is nothing wrong with the plane, and if there was the captain would know about it."
Production of ID cards showing that we were aircrew and ground engineer gave her the opportunity to tell us that we may be who we said but we obviously didn't know about the workings of that plane. Eventually my colleague shouted for the number one and when she arrived told her that if she didn't get straight up to the front and tell the boss he would. Bless her she looked out of the window and went straight to the cockpit.
In the meantime the original young lady accused us of making a fuss and trying to upset the other pax. When asked if she had heard of Kegworth she said "who?"
One minute later an announcement from the front we were returning to departure point, one engine shut down etc.
After landing the captain invited us to look at the aircraft with him and the engineers. There was bugger all oil left in the number 2 engine. the oil pressure and temp warnings had come on just after the number one had entered the cockpit.
Bless the number one. she knew the picture was wrong and went straight to the front. The other young lady learned a valuable lesson:- THE FLIGHT DECK DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING. And sometimes the pax just aren't just an embuggeration, occasionally they know aircraft better than the person doing the safety brief.
I hope pilots are allowed to post on this thread. We are all together up in the air and one F
up could get us all at once.
