Two stories, both about the same operator.
First one was a departure from Tennant Creek at about 0500 during a heavy wet season. It was the one that almost washed Katherine away, '98/'99? It also caused flooding of parts of the Tanami (which, incidentally, scared the cr@p out of me when having flown 90 minutes on a 187 track from Tindal I saw the moon reflected on water through a break in the clouds. WTF?!! I thought I was out over the Timor
). I was flying a C210 and had to find my way through really heavy rain to land and when I did the noise of the water being thrown off the mains onto the underside of the wings was deafening, never heard anything like it. Water on the runways and apron was flowing an inch or two deep and I had to taxi in with a dog and a white stick.
Dropped off the freight, topped up the fuel and headed for Alice. At 300' the AH toppled and the ASI dropped to zero. Cloudbase was about 500' and thick enough for it still to be dark underneath so I had the choice of either climbing in IMC through the cloud and almost certainly into an embedded CB or a low level circuit in the dark and landing. Seeing as how I'd been doing the run twice a week for over a year and knew the Tennant circuit well I opted for the latter. The subsequent phone call to the boss contained a number of threats about what would happen to me if I didn't press on. I told him I was heading for the company house in town where he'd find me once someone had replaced the flooded vac pump and drained the pitot/staic system. A few hours later I got a call to say the aircraft was ready so I ambled out to the airport where I found the boss (a LAME) standing on the uncowled engine trying to undo a stubborn bolt with a long screwdriver and half-brick. It was a 'Snap-On' brick though so that was ok.
Once he'd finished I then had to fly the freight and him back to Alice, the atmosphere was less than cordial perhaps not helped by me deliberately flying through every bit of cloud I could find (he was scared of flying)
Story 2. Left Darwin for Ramingining in a C402 fresh from maintenance. Only passengers were two locals who had missed the Metro flight and they were asleep before I'd closed the doors. One woke up around TOC and started singing along to his boom-box, Slim Dusty probably. A little later he started punching and kicking the seat in front of him, my warning to pack it in had no effect and around then I was informed that I was a "pucking white c*nt". I also caught him swigging from a bottle of Bundy that he'd somehow smuggled on board which explained his behaviour. As I was past halfway I called ahead to the company agent and asked her to have her hubby the local police sergeant there when I landed. In the meantime there was nothing I could do (single crew) other than let him drink and verbally abuse me. Things started getting nasty though and he got out of his seat and came at me with the bottle. I pulled the pin from the extinguisher and threatened to spray him with 'poison' then beat him to death with the empty which got him to sit down. As I was restowing the extinguisher he rushed me and I dropped it under my seat so had to resort to knocking off the autopilot and pulling and pushing hard a couple of times pinning him to the floor and throwing him against the ceiling. His mate stayed fast asleep!!
The bottle wielder finished his Bundy, passed out downwind, fell into the aisle on base leg and pissed his trousers on final. After shutdown his mate saw him and legged it so while we awaited the paddywagon I 'tested the patient for consciousness' with a couple of toe punts between the eyes. He didn't wake up
I filed all the reports but the company refused to pursue it because ".....it might put other aboriginal passengers off flying with us". How could it? Nobody but me knew I'd put the boot in!
Edited to add a third tale.
All single crew RPT aircraft require a functioning autopilot, nothing says you have to use it though. So, the company would fix and test the AP, sign it off as functioning then mark the on/off knob with engineers sealant so they'd know if you'd switched it on or not because
"If you use it we'll inevitably have to repair it again".
