Unusual freight
 

The underdeck of a DC-9-62F fully loaded with new dustbins
Palmtrees to the Gulf
Full cargo of sand to the Gulf

Unusual cargo
 

Not involved but witnessed:

A spark plug, repeat only one spark plug for a lawn mower delivered by a USAF C-124 Globemaster

Hunting Falcons
 

VIP DC-8-72, Ferry Dhahran - Medina (a week or so earlier, ferry Houston - Dhahran.....), pick up 2 Falcons and 1 Handler and deliver to the 'fellas' in Algiers for an outing. Ah, what's 30,000+ gallons of Jet A anyway.....? (oh, late 80's, no problem....)

500 gallons of avgas in a very old and used bladder in a very old and used DC-3 up in Northern BC Canada. The Captain and I were sitting up front with the windows open and both smoking cigarettes when the bladder started leaking real bad. We very carefully put the smokes out, turned off the nav lights cause the gas was pouring out of the tail cone and through the tail light. We landed a short time later and finished our smokes. We lost a couple hundred lbs of gas though.:}

In 1970 - a 93 year old passenger (SLF on his first airplane ride) returning back to his homeland in Colorado on a UAL B-737 LAX- DEN.

His original outbound trip from Colorado was via a CONESTOGA WAGON train, back when he was 12 yrs old in 1889.

(as relayed to me about a neighbor's grandfather).

Colonel Gaddafi's dead cousin...

Serious money!
 

108 metric tons of new Euros from Zurich to Athens.

We were told the day before we would be carrying "specialty bank paper".

I figured it out when we were met by several police vans full of guys dressed in black carrying awkwardly shaped gym bags.

They filled four trailers and drove off in a convoy.

12t potting soil, stones and palm trees to Luanda from Johannesburg in DC8, last week.

serious money ???
 

Did the 108T ship in one aircraft ??

Curious :ok:

Why not?

108T normal payload for a 747 :ugh:

Our company have flown such payloads in 747s before.

Hardly a long route for a 747, ZRH-ATH.

108T
 

Relax guys.

I just conjured up an image of having to dump some cargo (as it happens in movies .. ) to reduce weight ... :} wonder what the natives would think of a shower of currency

I am not contradicting.

Cheers :ouch:

??T

2003, BSG-BCN, a (thankfully heavily sedated) Rhinocerous.

Had to dump cargo once in a DC-3 between Agadez( Niger) and Tamenghest (Algeria) because we had lost a motor and we were way overweight. We had a motorcycle raceing team from Begium onboard originally but left them behind to get home on a different aircraft. We also had the old engine that I had changed in Agadez, on board as well as the raceing teams equipment. I had to throw out ( while in flight ) everything from generators, tools, drums of oil, motorcycles and parts. After I had everthing out the door we were barley able to maintain altitude so I was going to start taking the engine apart and throw it out too but...I had already threw out the ships toolbox.:ugh: The folks on the ground were probably very excited to see all this free stuff raining down on them.:}

dumping cargo ???
 

But what an arrogant attitude, dumping cargo like that .. :E White man has no consideration for natives .. :}

Wonder what the natives were thinking of the metal god's gift .. :mad: :mad:

(a replay of "gods must be crazy")

> Hope it is not considered thread drift .. (just adding a note of pun)

America is friendly with gadaffe now. They're united in the war on terror so maybe beleivable.

How about a MG sportscar on a KC97
 

In the mid 50's our squadron was TDY to Upper Heyford in the UK and after 116 days we returned to the states. Our CO had bought a MG and found that our tanker was almost empty of strap down cargo so against all regs it was loaded at night and returned to Kansas. If Lemay ever found out we would have all been in deep you know what.

Monkeys
 

Working at LHR 1970 or 71 when the PanAm Round the World flight PA1 was still a 707 (so no containers) I had the fun of helping placate the London terminating pax in the Customs Hall who were waiting for a VERY slow delivery of bags.

What the pax couldn't see was, on the far side of the wall, everyone else from the PA Station Manager down, frantically trying to clean VERY smelly monkey pee and poo from the (usually) expensive luggage that had been unfortunate enough to be loaded before Istanbul where the thoughtful loaders had placed a shipment of a number of cages of (apparently) incontinent monkeys directly on top of said bags!

The effects could not all be erased :uhoh: and some quite expensive damaged bag claims followed.

CAA inspector - does that count!! :p

Lions to Africa...
 

Picked up three caged male lions around 1997 in AMS on loan from the AMS zoo to the Joburg zoo. FE went down into the front belly to look at them and came back white as a sheet. Apparently, he got very close to a cage and one bounced off the bars roaring at him.