Blimey what a stroke of luck...........

Castle,

What was the cargo weight?
What MTOW do the runway length/strength/departure obstacles at Agra allow?
Do dip clearances allow the most direct route?
What is the wind factor heading west from India?

I had not wanted to get involved in this discussion/slanging match as there are no easy answers to the problems involved, with fault lying in many different areas. However, as an AT captain on 2 different fleets (and 2 different airforces) for 14 yrs I feel I have to say something about the number of veiled accusations being bandied around on this thread. The problems being discussed do exist and I accept things must be done to improve the service we offer to our customers, and they are customers and the reason, usually, we are there. However, I am getting pissed off with people making thinly veiled accusations about the actions of crews, effectively amounting to fraud by engineering nightstops in certain locations. In all my time I have never, nor do I know of anyone, falsely declaring an aircraft u/s to gain a nice night somewhere or to b**gg** around the pax. By all means carry on the debate about customer service but IF YOU HAVE EVIDENCE OF A CREW FALSELY DECLARING AN AIRCRAFT U/S THEN REPORT IT TO THE AUTHORITIES, IF NOT THEN SHUT THE F*** UP and get back to discussing the issues at hand rather than slagging people off and making false accusation.
Rant Off :ugh: :ugh:

Banggearo,
Spot on:D . Saves me from typing:ok: . As I have said before - a little knowledge is dangerous:ugh: . As a pax if you are unhappy then report this to the chap nominated as Senior Pax or whatever they call him this week. I wrote a long letter, with issues concerning a contracted flight, that was forwarded to Andover and received a reply that mirrored my concerns in several areas.

"A Tri* was used to trail 6 F3's back to UK via Al Dhafra and Akrotiri. Why the Tri* could had to go to Abu Dhabi Intl and Rhodes for the night stops is difficult to explain. I believe the Tri* did get back to UK more or less on time which was good news..."

Reach, well put in response to the above post.

Now for the defence of the Tri*.

Abu Dhabi and Rhodes are uses on middle east trails because they allow more fuel to be lifted, and have the appropriate handling facilities. A Tri* is not a truck; you don't fill the tanks with fuel and drive off into the sunset I'm afraid. CastleView, you really are giving us too much credit for being able to control our own destiny.

As Reach then pointed out re the C17. Are you C17 qualified Castle?ie. Are you qualified to mkae that statement that a C17 can make India-UK direct? I'll hold the rest of my reply until I find out.

The point about spares etc for the chicks is also highly relevant.


Banggearo, Well put Sir. I am trying to get that message across: ie that contrary to popular belief, that we are in general professional!

I am perplexed by the number of people jumping to conclusions on this subject when they are blatantly unaware of all the facts. Two sides to every story, anyone?

The post from one of the characters on the Movers' site makes illuminating reading:

"the aircraft to take them home was chartered with a payload of 14K. When the capt told the movers he would only take 11K"

So around 90 mins before chocks the Movers' realistic plan becomes worthless as they have lost 20% of available payload. A radical solution was borne of necessity. Yes, Charter Coord in DTMA could have been contacted to request them to liaise with the charter company (via the broker), but this would all take time, extending the delay. In my experience some aircraft captains can be rather obstinate, irrespective of the logic placed in front of them! I suggest that Charter Coord will be examining the suitability of using this particular company in the future, but I suspect that they are cheap! I am surprised that the pax were not informed of the reasons necessitating the abrupt change of plan, but as stated above, AKT Movers may have a different recollection of events! I will hasten to add that the alleged attitude of the AKT Mover towards shift change, and the decision to de-segregate the bags, are indefensible. So I assume that all you critics are perfect, and your judgement has never lapsed?

The issue of calls home could easily be solved; however, in the current financial climate who pays? HQ LAND? HQ STC, as it their aircraft that fell over? A decision for the adults and bean counters, certainly not the Movers.

Do any of you honestly think that Movers deliberately attempt to mislead pax by providing inaccurate or incomplete briefs? Aircrew, Engineers, Ops and Movers are all involved in the process, and slick comms between all parties is essential. Chugalug2’s comments at #107 (page 6) provides one of the few glimpses of common sense seen on this thread.

Check-in times are consistently a contentious issue; 4 hrs prior to chocks does appear excessive, but without the full facts (eg availability of transport to move troops to APOD, security implications of moving in daylight etc) I would be reluctant to criticise further. However, the check-in time is not always stipulated by the Movers. Within the last 18 months, a GR4 Sqn was recovering from a North American Ex. As it had been agreed mutually that bags would be checked-in the night prior to departure, the SEngO and FS Eng were offered a 1-hr check-in for all pax; they looked at each other, mumbled something about needing greater time to ensure that all the Techies were accounted for, and stated that a 2-hr check-in would be just fine!

Another anecdote to finish, just to provide evidence that, just occasionally, aircrew do not always play by the rules. When Leeming’s F3 Sqns deployed to N American Exs in the late-90s they were regularly supported by 2 Hercs, and their TRANSOPS always included a flag at Keflavik. Upon arrival in North Yorkshire the crews attempted consistently to shut off (essential) freight, so that they could overfly and proceed direct to Newfoundland. Sound familiar? “Tail” “wag” and “dog” spring to mind!

Yes, if you haven’t guessed by now I am a Movs Officer (Supply Officer with the Movs annotation), and I am bl00dy proud of the hard work and can-do attitude displayed by the vast majority of the Movs Trade! If you are dissatisfied with the standard of service received from Movs Staff then please seek out the chain of command and let them know; attitude readjustment can them commence! After all we are all on the same side….aren’t we?

Ratty/Reach,

Regarding a C17 flying back direct to UK from India; one of the plans was for the aircraft (not that the crew were aware) earlier in the week, to fly direct from Delhi to BZN/LEU. Dip clear was not a problem. I would also have thought that the F3 techies would have been on the Tristar, and indeed the only F3 techies on the C17 were not Sqn lineys but OEU guys.

Even if headwinds/ cargo weight etc prevented the aircraft flying direct to UK, two night stops is excessive.

Again, I thank the crew for getting us back on time and for trying to get us back into Waddington, rather than us having to endure the MT journey from BZN.

Y _G

Quite right, 2 night stops is excessive, if it was for no reason. If however if they were the "sweeper", then they would follow the trail. I wasn't on that trail so I don't know. What I find staggering, is that people think it's us (the crews) engineering these night stops! Really? C17 and Tri* are valuable assets at the moment, and I can't see the crew being allowed 2 nightstops just for giggles. In fact, the notion is completely laughable. It's hard enough sometimes getting min crew rest!

Flyboy,

My point exactly, the Tri* and C17 followed similar routes and timings all the way back. Surely it should have been possible for one of them (C17) to fly a more direct and quicker route back.

As it was, one F3 did not get out of India, and a second was left at Al Dhafra. Not sure how may left Akrotiri.

Y_G

I think that is possibly well above my payscale to answer that one. I have long given up trying to fathom the itineries that el taskers come up with.

My only guess is that the C17 had freight which could not be taken on the Tri*, and was needed to sweep. Often the Tri* used on trails are K1 which have no cargo door, therefore the sweeping herc or C17(?) will carry the spares and freight. Just a guess.

Yeller - you obviously have first hand experience of this mission that I don't, and I've never been to Delhi. I asked the questions because they seemed a more likely reason for the stops than crew entertainment. If you or Castle know better then I'll stand corrected.

My last post was pages back, but I would like to confirm that my gripe was not with the aircrews. All of my incidents (many many) involved the movements staff. I thought as I got promoted it would get better but the only difference between me being a JT and later a Sqn Ldr was that I got to use a different bar at the gateway. I can't ever remember being treated as a valued customer, always as an inconvenience.
People will always be hacked off if delayed or cancelled, but they get really p***ed off when people lie to them or abandon them. Tell the truth about delays!! Why blame Air Traffic if a jet has gone tech??

"People will always be hacked off if delayed or cancelled, but they get really p***ed off when people lie to them or abandon them. Tell the truth about delays!! Why blame Air Traffic if a jet has gone tech??"

That virtually sums up most of the previous few pages of posts. Never lie, you will always be caught out - and rightly so too!

The lazy, self-interested TriShaw crew who left an aircraft load of passengers to the pax liasion officer to sort out at some South American airport in the middle of the night typify the worst of the AT world. Little did they know that the pax liaison officer was the new MPA Sqn Ldr Air. Big mistake....BIG! As OC twenty one and sixpence soon found out.

Those of us who had other backgrounds before joining the AT/AAR world always seemed to me to be more interested in looking after our passengers than the dyed-in-the-wool route queens or Dulles dinosaurs. Whether that meant phone-patching Wattisham MT control abeam Dakar to get the fighter mates' bus rolling or whatever, we were always keen to do that bit extra. I don't know whether that's because we'd all suffered ourselves in the past or whether we were basically more interested (and capable) than stereotypical 'truckies', but our pax were always thankful.....

That's pretty rich from someone who has a reputation of being the biggest dinosaur of the lot.

More interested (and capable) - you pompous old buffoon. :mad:

Oh really, idiotchild?

If you wish to hurl personal abuse, go ahead. You'll only make yourself look rather pathetic.

Would I sooner have a chopped Valley AFTS Hawk pilot as a co-pilot or some idle, underachieving trucky who never made it that far? Your guess....

Ding ding in the RED CORNER we have BEagle and in the BLUE CORNER we have........whats your name kid? ah yes Rudekid. Now lets keep this fight clean and no scratching like big girls..

Away you go

Not biting. In any case, it's probably past idiotchild's bedtime.....

But impugning the reputation of 75% of the multi-engine flying world because they haven't been to Valley is okay is it?

I just love your supercilious assertion that you were a more thoughtful and interested Captain because you'd flown the Hunter.:ugh:

Now this I AM looking forward to:E

all spelling mistakes are "df" alcohol induced

Beagle - another name for b125 Bulldog isn't. I seem to remember that beagle company went bust. Not that I am drawing any similarities with the recent thread.;)

Lol, Sit back and wait ABIW, it should be a good'un.
And just for the record Beagle, you do sound like a pompous prat, but I can't be bothered to start a inter-aircrew/sqn/type bitchfight over who has more minerals. There are other issues at stake.

Well, I suppose it is half -term...

For state schools...

Whatever those are.

For your information, Beagle Aviation was placed in receivership in 1969. The manufacturing rights for the Srs B-120 Bulldog were then taken over by Scottish Aviation.

Back to the thread, children?

Oh come on you big scaredy cat............. If you back down now the girls will start picking on you in the playground.............You did say that all truckies are
idle and underachieving.

And you wonder why people call you pompous? But yes, back to the topic chaps.

PS. Perhaps, (and this is just a theory) your perception of idle under achieving truckies is coloured by the truckie fleet you were on......? Don't tar the rest of us with the same brush. Cheers

Well at least it lifted the mood for a moment!! At least you didn't call yourself a Bassett cos we know how capable they were .... who manufactured them?

Lol, indeed it did.

At least Beadle (sp) hasn't mentioned the A330/MRTT/FSTA on this thread yet...:{

Movers...never apologise for them...just their efforts!!!:mad:

MOG

To reiterate - in 30 yrs of using AT, never had a problem with the crews - BUT - what really gripped my ****e was the unbelievable attitude of the movers towards the pax - WITHOUT EXEPTION!

FL Great maiden post, Sir, and welcome to the lions den! I hope that some of your fellow movers will join you in putting their two penn'eth. I really can't see the use of everyone involved simply posting to their own forums, sort of preaching to the converted! I hope we can all appreciate that, when we don't talk to each other, there are plenty of "knowledgeable" people who will the vacuum! Thus we are told on good authority that crews write their own itineraries. Movers have a perfect knowledge of everything that is happening, and use this to subvert the free flow of AT with an agenda that Goebbels would have admired. Planners produce flow charts for no good reason than their artistic merit, whatever, all utter twaddle, but all because of no information or dis information. Whatever Beags has said elsewhere, he is surely right about one thing. NEVER NEVER LIE TO THE PAX!!! If you are a mover, but are not sure what the situation is, find out. If you are crew and know what the situation is, tell others who don't. This isn't a game of "knowledge is power", it's a game of trust, lose that and you will not regain it easily. So the aim is that every one knows what every one knows. Obviously if the reasons are complex and accumulative then a précis of the scenario is in order. You have the advantage of having, in the main, resilient pax who will put up with anything as long as they are not being lied to, so keep them in the loop and respect them!
Rant over, message ends!

Well, given that I wasn't on that trip, and I am one of the ones who posted that I try to brief the pax myself when possible, then I can't provide you with that answer. If they could've, and it was certain that it was going to be u/s on landing, they should've. I hope this explains. Rest assured that we are all responsible for the flow of information, at appropriate times. The main issue of this thread however does appear to stem from the attitude of those on the ground when the aircraft landed.

FatLad, indeed a good post, however I think many of us, who have on occasion sent up the chain if we have received a less than satis service, find that little, if anything appears to happen. Correct me if i'm wrong, as I said nothing APPEARS to happen. That's obviously not the fault of the guy on the ground, but a fault of the system. eg the routestage. Does it really work??

Chug, you have hit the nail on the head, well done.

All the best,

Yup, years ago BA did it twice going in to Inverness.

Once they were late landing and blamed the RAF. As BEags said, big mistake OC Ops Lossie objected and BA had to apologise. Unfortunately the 100 odd pax would not have got that apology.

Second time they put the jet on the ground at Kinloss. Immediately a vehicle arrived from Dalcross like phoning ahead good boys. OC Ops was then flabergasted as the crew descended, got in the limousine and drove off leaving the aircraft, power off, load of pax on board. "Not our problem old boy, ServisAir (or who ever), crew duty time etc, bye"

A movement team was quickly summoned and some sort of order imposed but of course no transport of baggage handling was possible.

'Nother time at Gatwick - 90 minute flight - baggage 120 minutes from the aircraft. BA couldn't care less. Not paid for another flight with them since.

To try and take some of the flak away fom the movers, why is the RAF Akrotitri holiday camp opening hours (and the infamous Akrotiri window) still such a Holy Grail? I met a guy a few years back who had been OC Ops at Akrotiri when they had binned the "window" and operated all hours. He told me they were manned for 24 hr ops.

So, why do aircraft staging through Akr still have to meet the window requirements, now that it is under "new management". I have seen another nation's airbase that is not scaled for 24 hr ops repeatedly asked to open way beyond its own operating hrs, simply to allow the RAFaircraft to land late, as its arrival time has been dictated by the RAF Akrotiri window.

AB, the window, IIRC, came in to being in 1974 after the invasion and run down of Akrotiri. It stopped being manned 24 hrs and NEAF set up the window so that the single shift workers were not, by default, dragged in to 2 or even 3 shifts which would surely have happened.

Isn't inertia and clinging on to a good thing wonderful?

Some conclusions: clearly there is a toxic relationship here. In the nature of things, if neither party trusts the other, no amount of "Well, I'm a mover/I'm aircrew and I'm really good, stop picking on me" will help.

There's also a typical failure to understand the supposedly private sector practices the last three governments have been so keen on. Giving public-sector organisations a strict budget to stick to, a business plan, "trading funds", having to pay capital charges back to Treasury etc - it always seems to add up to one thing: we work until the budget is reached, then stop dead.

A real company supplying the government that has contracted to provide something and received payment doesn't have this privilege. If they miscalculated their costs and discover halfway that it's a bad deal, tough. Essentially, AT has contracted to serve the pax - and if it's going to burst the budget, well, shoulda thought of that when you took on the job. Naturally, as fake private sector practices are always imposed to save money, the budget is never sufficient. And because it's possible to walk away from serving the public, the efficiency savings never turn up.

Another point is that there is a classic sign of a sick organisation, which is that doing ordinary routine jobs well requires leadership. Leadership is what you need when things get weird. It shouldn't be necessary to do outstanding things to provide the basic normal job, but clearly it is. Also, no-one seems to be responsible for it.

Suggestions; break down the mover task and hire civilians to run BZZ. Works for Virgin.. Routinise the lot. There is no real need for special personnel and facilities to run a smallish airline, which is what the airbridge is as far as Akrotiri or Dubai. They become necessary down-route in operational theatres and if an airborne operation is planned - which should anyway be colocated with 16AAB at Wattisham.. Appoint one person to be responsible for each trip in all respects.

Tis a shame that we many pages of anecdotes relating to poor service. It is easy to retreat into the 'well they are not one of us why should we help' mentality but it is also possible to try to help. Perhaps things are better away from the MOBs when the movs and sqn personnel socialise together on dets (I'm thinking Op WARDEN between the GWs when I had the 'privilege' to have MT and Movs as my responsibilty) and favours can be earned and repaid. However, I did feel a bit sorry for the transit pax given the poor facilities, especially the Turdis WC in summer temps. Although on one occasion we had a distress call from a C-130 homeward bound from Georgia or somewhere similar after one of those Open Skies/Wpn inspection trips requesting a toilet stop, preferably porcelain, since the team had developed food poisoning and had filled the on-board facilities. We managed to get them to the food mall but denied all responsibility for their actions thereafter. So we could be human occasionally. Or another time when a VIP 146 dropped in and we made an effort to get the steward to the commissary before it shut for the the day because the following day was one of the 'no fly' days which meant everything shut and his VIP would go hungry. I don't pretend our attitude was perfect but it didn't hurt to put yourself in the other person's shoes occasionally, and in any case we still suffered the same start and finish from LYE or BZN. And I hope that the Comp A system still works as well as it did back then, when it did seem that we could all pull together as a team.

[QUOTE=greycoat;2924393Or another time when a VIP 146 dropped in and we made an effort to get the steward to the commissary before it shut for the the day because the following day was one of the 'no fly' days which meant everything shut and his VIP would go hungry. [/QUOTE]

Inflight rations from the commisary? tut tut.

Movers are great at the technical side of getting kit onto aircraft and sorting out the paperwork - but when it comes to customer service and the human interface, things don't change.

Dhahran, Op JURAL, Summer 92. Essential piece of C2 kit for DETCO to get his job done, long overdue from Blighty. Finally due to arrive on single AT arrival of the day (note use of the word single), late afternoon. Proceed to logs area to discover pallets unloaded successfully, AT already departing.

To Movements Officer: "Please can we have our urgent kit that's been overdue".

"No, if we don't go back to the hotel now we'll miss our tea. We'll break down the pallets in the morning"

The Movs team had worked for all of a couple of hours that day waiting on, processing and turning around the single AT - unlike the rest of the det busting a gut to achieve operations. Maybe they could have taken a bigger lunch in anticpation of the AT arriving late in the afternon? Get real.

The taste of the attitude still lingers ..... :ugh:

"Movers are great at the technical side of getting kit onto aircraft and sorting out the paperwork"........................really, seldom experienced that:rolleyes:

all spelling mistakes are "df" alcohol induced

Yes, I can well remember the f*ckwit mover out in Cyprus who suggested that he could he build the pallets better if the two large avionics STCs (boxes) marked "THIS WAY UP" on each side were placed on their sides.

S_H

a slight drift .......

a question ...... what Aircraft would have been used for transfering RAF personnel to/from Aden/UK around the mid sixties? ....

What would the route have been? ..... :confused:

mucho gratias in advance ....