A number of years ago I was told at short notice that I had to get to MPA asap, as one of loadies on the Chinook had come home for compassionate reasons. Flight was due to go out on a Sunday, the day that the clocks went back...
Already the hair on my neck was sticking up, I just knew that there would be GMT and local time faff. So I asked MT at Odiham if I could go an hour early just in case. Couldn't be done I was told as the coach was due to pick up a load of inbound pax and they had double checked my timings. Great…
Waiting for MT at the Sqn, a 4-tonner turns up! The coach had gone an hour earlier and they didn’t think that I would want to go on it, but they had checked the flight times, it was all OK! On the way to Brize, the 4-tonner breaks down. After 10mins of the young SAC kicking the tyres and being on the mobile to her boss and me considering getting a taxi, off we go again…
Arriving at Brize I join the queue that is extending out of the terminal. Guy in front of me asks if I’m on the flight to Bermuda!!! MPA I tell him. You better get inside he said as I was in the wrong queue!
Yep, you’ve guessed, there was just less than an hour to take off, my worst fears had come true. It was going that hour earlier.
I explained to the Cpl the problem I’d had getting there, who I was and why I was going to MPA at such short notice and he just looked at me and said, “Well, you ain’t getting on the flight then Sarge are you.”
I asked to see his boss and a WO comes over. After explaining it all once again, he says the same thing. I ask to see the DAMO, if he’s not available, then the aircraft captain. Their heads pick up as they realise that I know something about the movements system.
I explain the whole thing to the DAMO again. Despite the pax still sitting in the departure lounge, he says the same thing.
I ask him that I’d like to see the aircraft captain so that I can go as supernumerary crew and at the same time telling him that he would have to explain to CBFFI why his Chinook couldn’t fly as he wasn’t willing to put me on the flight. That raised a few eyebrows!
OK he says, but you’ll have to call out the Duty Officer at Odiham to get the flight delayed! I was flabbergasted! Do you know how long that will take I say (by now it had already taken 20mins), Christ, why can’t you just be flexible and put me on the flight. He relented, they put on the flight.
The long and short of it is, at no time from the Cpl upwards were they helpful. All it needed was, “Hold on a mo, I’ll see what I can do,” instead it was just one wall after the next. Yes, I got lucky by quoting a few names and knowing my way around the system, but it shouldn’t have to come to that.
It’s for the above reasons that the movers get their bad reputations from…