PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Global Aviation Magazine : 60 Years of the Hercules
Old 18th Jun 2015, 19:45
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smujsmith
 
Join Date: Jan 2013
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Doug,

I had the same story from a GE who was on that trip. It appears that no one checked the weight of the box related to a box, plus windscreen! No doubt, it wasn't the first "faux pas", committed by Lynehams supply system. Another "fellow GE" related their breakdown somewhere in Africa, with a seriously leaking flap hydraulic pipe that could not be fixed "on site". A request for the spare was placed, which duly arrived, courtesy of BA. Now, nothing to do directly with BA but I understand, but that they had a length limit of 2 Mtrs (whatever that is) on packages in their hold, the new pipe was around 14 feet long (a bit too long) so, the stackers bent it in half to conform to shipping limitations. you can imagine the reaction of the AGE on receipt of the bent pipe. Funnily enough, a passing VC10 dropped off an unbent version of the pipe within 24 hours.

The funniest event I personally encountered was during a return from somewhere east of Akronelli, when we had an ignition relay failure on our No3 Engine. As it was not long after GW1 there was a U.S. C130 outfit located on the airfield we were stuck at. They offered us a spare, which had a slightly different part number to the one we removed. With one start required to Akronelli we signalled Lyneham Ops for permission to use the offered spare to get us to Cyprus, and the correct part. No way said Lyneham, stay there we will send you the correct item. Well, blow me down, you know what's coming, the spare arrived Civiair from UK and was duly identified as the same part number as the item the U.S. Air Force kindly offered us 36 hours earlier. We once again corresponded with Lyneham Ops and informed them what we had received, admittedly the question we asked was "do you want us to use the -A7 that the USAF offered or the -A7 you sent ? Particularly as you insist that we need an -A12. Ops lost no time in blaming Supply Squadron for having the wrong items on their shelves and insisted on a further 36 hour delay as we waited for the correct part. I believe they sent a Propulsion SNCO to examine the second offering before dispatch. I can guarantee that there's a lot more similar anecdotes on this particular trail. I suspect that other AT fleets may have suffered similar problems.

Smudge
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