TwinAisle_ I remember the investigation into the freight door accidents drew out that the loaders, unable to stow the door handle, were 'putting their knee' to it to force it home to close up. You can't do this with aluminium aeroplanes. I think it fair to say if the loaders were going to travel on that aeroplane, I don't think they would have used such brute force when something is obviously jamming in the mechanism.

Our barless tugs have the usual orange ACB on the roof together with a red one, is the red one related to towing without acft beacons on?

NSF - you are right, the baggage handlers were noted to be using brute force to close the DC10 cargo door. HOWEVER - the whole point was that when they did this, the door appeared to be safe - the vent door closed and the warning lights went out.

A well designed door may still have yielded to brute force, but SHOULD NEVER yield in such a way that it indicated it was safe when it was not. That was the bad design.

As I said - blame the designer for a bad door, not a baggage handler for screwing up when using a badly designed door....

TA

Yes, but this is leading to a side issue. My main point is careless operation of expensive equipment by the handlers concerned! Agreed the design was not as good as it could have been, but couple that with brute force and insensitive handling, then you are going to get aeroplanes towed into other aeroplanes!

Any photos of the BA incident???

JUST WANTED TO BRING IT TO THE TOP AGAIN !!!! - ANYONE GOT THEIR HANDS ON SOME PHOTOS YET ?

:D :D :D :D

I was told yesterday that senior mismanagement had banned all pictures because after last weeks incident with the Rocket they don't want any more bad publicity in The Sun and other papers.

JAS,
You make it sound like 'big expensive mistakes' are ok.
I'm sure the BA management are delighted to have two longhaul aircraft out of service for weeks on end, but hey, it was a mistake, and yeah, a bit expensive, but that's ok! Get real. I'm sure they've got better things to spend £12m plus on than repairing aeroplanes bent by ground crew.
And as for blaming Easyjet or Ryanair, grow up.