Lagos!
Yeah laughed my ass off there when I got arrested! Number of years back on the mighty Diezel 8.... Offloaded in Lagos and suppose to ferry fly to Yamousoukro. I was training an F/E, when during start a belt loader banged into to the forward fuselage.I asked the crew to continue starting the other 3engines, while I would get out and see if there was any damage.
Funny enough, as I opend the door, here was the beltloader and a nigerian chap jumping into the airplane. Didn't pay much attention to it at the time.. As I got down on the ramp I could see the extend of the damage done by the beltloader. Nothing much, just a crack above one one the Turbo Compressor panel,s unpresurrized area, so not a big deal.We decided to shut down the engines and go with the formalities.
The Captain was going to fill out an incident rapport and my trainee and I fixed up the crack. (Speedtaped it).
All great, ready to blast of out of this wonderfull place!I got to the top op the (still attached) beltloader when I found a passport on the floor of our galley.
Rather strange and asked the rest of the crew if they lost a 'Nigerian passport'. Obviously nobody did. So I decided to take a look behind position 13, where out empty pallet stack was.... What do I find? A Nigerian stow away.....F*cking great.
Trying to keep it quiet, I told the fellow to make a run for it. Guess it was too late...Our hero Captain found him running down the cabin and started yelling and screaming to the military guy (the one that calls the tower and clears you to start) that we have a stowaway onboard.The poor guy got beaten the sh*t out of him with a whip.
We finally managed to close the door and blast off for Yanousoukro, it had only been a 18 hour duty already..... So we pushed and started and taxied out for 19R. At the hold, Lagos Tower cleared us for take-off. Great, I can see an airplane on a roughly short final, but we're cleared for take-off.
We decided to let the poor buggers land first, instead in forcing them in a go around. Ok, the inbound 737 vacated 19R and once again cleared for take-off 19R. Stabilizing.......setting reduced thrust...... Airspeed alive...... 80 Knots.....
ABC123 (that's us) abort your take off, repeat, you are not cleared for take off.....Took us a good couple of seconds to decide what to do....We did ended up abording the take off roll at about a hundred knots.
Frustrated we taxied back to the ramp. From there it only got better. Now the "officials" wanted a full report of what had happend. They also wanted the Captain and me to identify the stowaway. So we did....Big mistake going with this clown Captain... As we get to the holding cell of the poot bloke (not bigger then a dog kennel) the idiot started screaming "that's the stowaway, beat him, beat him".
Not sure what happend next but I nearly ended up with the stowaway in his cage. I was too arrested now....For what I still don't know.
That took another hour or so. Finally our F/O came to the rescue. If it wasn't for him we probably would have ended up in jail for People Smuggle. J.P G. , thanks and also hope you have these fund memories of Lagos. As for you, Captain G.S. it was about time for you to retire.....
Another 2 hours later and we finally left Lagos
So Lagos, yeah great fun.....
So much fun, I never hope to land there again....
Last edited by Maurice Chavez; 10th Dec 2007 at 21:41.
Reason: forgot to mention the year, 1997, well progressed....