Eideard

After every flight, United Parcel Service pilots fill out a form, called a ‘gripe sheet,’ which tells mechanics about problems they experienced with the aircraft. The mechanics correct the problems, document their repairs on the form, and then pilots review the gripe sheets before the next flight.

Never let it be said that the UPS ground crews lack a sense of humor. Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by UPS pilots (marked with a P) and the solutions recorded (marked with an S) by maintenance engineers…
*
P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.
*
P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.
*
P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.
*
P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That’s what friction locks are for. (my personal favorite)
*
P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you’re right.
*
P:Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.
*
P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.
*
P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
S: Took hammer away from the midget.

Can’t wait to pass this one along. I am the only member of my New Mexico extended family [including my wife] who’s never piloted an aircraft. I get to hear everyone’s war stories. They’ll love this.

A partial list btw. Click over to here for the complete list.

Thanks to adollyciousirony

Dropping water one bucket at a time

One of the dozens of massive blazes that have torched rain-starved Texas was set by arsonists, police say.

Cops in Leander are hunting for two teenage girls and two teenage boys suspected of starting a fire Monday night that gutted around a dozen houses and forced hundreds of people to evacuated their homes…

The teens were spotted running through a wooded area where the fire started, police said. The city was offering up to $2,000 to anyone with information leading to the arrest of the arsonists.

Local reports said the blaze ripped through at least 300 acres, destroyed 11 homes and damaged at least eight homes around Leander, about 22 miles northwest of Austin…

Investigators say one of girl suspects was wearing a pink shirt and blue jeans, and she had black hair that may have been dyed. The other girl was described as having dirty blond hair in a white T-shirt and jeans. Both boys had dark, shaggy hair and were dressed in jeans, police said. All four teens are white, cops said.

More than 150 different wildfires have ravaged hundreds of thousands of acres and destroyed more than 1,000 homes in Texas this week.

One fire, in Bastrop, southeast of Austin, was described as the most devastating wildfire in more than a decade. That fire raged for a fourth-consecutive day on Wednesday, consuming 45 square miles and forcing 7,000 to evacuate the area. More than 600 homes were said to have been destroyed, and four people have been killed.

Murder is murder is murder. If they catch these kids and they are proven to have started fires – throw away the key.

Yes, there are safety reasons for that – the maximum flying hours, not the cheapskate part.

A Mexican military helicopter landed Saturday afternoon at Laredo International Airport by mistake, said a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Mucia Dovalina, the uniform public affairs officer for the Laredo Port of Entry, said the helicopter landed about 3 p.m., but she couldn’t share details such as the number of occupants or whether they were armed.

Dovalina said that, following protocol, CBP officers checked out the helicopter’s occupants, then allowed them to return to Mexico in the aircraft.

“The only thing that I can tell you is that they did land here,” she said. “It was by mistake. They were processed and they were returned to Mexico…”

In July, a convoy of soldiers rolled across the international bridge at Donna and were processed by customs and sent back across.

Just in case you wondered about some of the factors affecting the success rate of Mexico’s military operations against drug gangs.

Aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp. has quietly developed a new spy plane that can listen in on phone conversations, use high-powered radar and shoot live video footage as it flies at 30,000 feet above the Earth.

And the spy plane…would operate with or without a pilot sitting in the cockpit.

Until now, U.S. military aircraft have been designed to either have a pilot on board or be an unmanned drone. But Northrop’s new plane, dubbed the Firebird, can switch from being a traditional aircraft to a drone with just a few modifications.

The Century City company is developing the propeller-powered Firebird at its own expense. It is betting that the hybrid plane will appeal to the Pentagon as defense budget cuts loom and the federal government deals with rising deficits…

If the military has a plane that can do both missions, it may save money on maintenance personnel and spare parts, Captain said. “It’s the same engine. It’s the same airframe. The only difference is how it’s piloted.”

The Firebird would compete for Pentagon contracts with the Predator and Reaper drones that have become ubiquitous in skies over Iraq and Afghanistan. Made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. of the San Diego area, Predators and Reapers are often armed with Hellfire missiles or laser-guided bombs as they buzz over the war zone.

Although the Firebird is being touted mainly as an unarmed spy plane, Northrop officials said the Firebird would have the capability to be outfitted with missiles.

Northrop has been testing the aircraft, which resembles a massive dragonfly, at the Mojave Air and Space Port for more than a year as engineers fine-tune the technology…

Designed to fly for as long as 40 hours at a time with a top speed of about 230 mph, Northrop foresees the Firebird carrying out a variety of reconnaissance and surveillance missions for the military, said Rick Crooks, the company’s program manager…

Crooks also sees the Firebird appealing to law-enforcement organizations for surveillance and government agencies that need spy planes to assess damage after natural disasters.

RTFA for the range of Wargeek potential. Cripes, I can even think of a TV series that could spin from this critter.

Gov. Bill Haslam on Monday defended his first executive act: eliminating the requirements for the governor and top aides to disclose how much they earn in outside income.

Mr. Haslam…told The Commercial Appeal newspaper of Memphis that while he did think the public should know the sources of income and investments for public officials, the amount was not important.

During the governor’s race last year, Mr. Haslam, a Republican, refused to say how much he earned from Pilot, a family-owned national truck stop chain with annual revenues of about $20 billion.

He overturned an executive order signed by his immediate predecessor, Phil Bredesen, a Democrat.

When a core value of your politics is aiding corporate goals at the expense of the electorate an executive order like this makes perfect sense. Ethics has nothing to do with it. Access to knowledge of the hacks running your state isn’t needed for voters who only require ideology telling them how to vote.

“Twilight in Canyon Blue” by Jerry Anderson

In an act of extraordinary kindness, a Southwest Airlines pilot delayed his plane by 12 minutes to ensure a passenger would be able to say goodbye to his murdered grandson.

The man’s three-year-old grandchild had been killed by his daughter’s live-in boyfriend in Denver and was due to be taken off life support ahead of donating his organs…

Having been in Los Angeles on business, the man’s wife had arranged for him to transfer at Tucson airport in Arizona onto a flight bound for Denver to be with his bereaved daughter…

Yet, despite arriving at Los Angeles International Airport two hours before his flight was due to depart, lengthy check-in lines meant he faced a race against time to board on schedule.

Even after sprinting from the security checkpoint in his socks, the grandfather still arrived at the departure gate 12 minutes late…

According to a letter written to travel blog Elliott.org by the man’s wife, he was greeted by the pilot and ticketing agent with the words: ‘Are you Mark? We held the plane for you and we’re so sorry about the loss of your grandson…’

The letter continues: ‘As my husband walked down the Jetway with the pilot, he said, “I can’t thank you enough for this.”

‘The pilot responded with, “They can’t go anywhere without me and I wasn’t going anywhere without you. Now relax. We’ll get you there. And again, I’m so sorry.”’

Thanks to the kindness of the pilot, the man was able to reach his daughter in Denver and bid farewell to his grandson…

A Southwest spokesperson said the airline was ‘proud’ of the pilot’s behaviour.

My kind of pilot. My kind of airline. The rare corporation that hasn’t forgotten that human beings are the source of their income.

Very special thanks to Mr. Fusion.

“What’s that behind us?”

A United Airlines flight from Chicago to Germany was diverted to Toronto’s Pearson Airport late Monday night after the pilot spilled a coffee, Transport Canada reports.

The coffee interfered with the plane’s navigation and communication system and sent out distress signals including code 7500 — unlawful interference, or a hijacking — and code 7600, which means the plane has lost communications.

“With the help of their company dispatch staff, the flight crew was confirmed the problem to be a NAV(navigation)/communication issue and not a valid code 7500. The flight crew initially diverted to return to Chicago but subsequently declared an emergency … and diverted to Toronto…”

A United spokesman told CNN a review is underway and it was too soon to comment on what happened.

Everyone’s just happy that Homeland Insecurity didn’t order them to be shot down.

Fred Hargesheimer, a World War II Army pilot whose rescue by Pacific islanders led to a life of giving back as a builder of schools and teacher of children, died on Thursday morning. He was 94…

On June 5, 1943, Hargesheimer, a P-38 pilot with the 8th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, was shot down by a Japanese fighter while on a mission over the Japanese-held island of New Britain in the southwest Pacific. He parachuted into the trackless jungle, where he barely survived for 31 days until found by local hunters.

They took him to their coastal village and for seven months hid him from Japanese patrols, fed him and nursed him back to health from two illnesses. In February 1944, with the help of Australian commandos working behind Japanese lines, he was picked up by a U.S. submarine off a New Britain beach.

After returning to the U.S. following the war, Hargesheimer got married and began a sales career with a Minnesota forerunner of computer maker Sperry Rand, his lifelong employer. But he said he couldn’t forget the Nakanai people, who he considered his saviours.

The more he thought about it, he later said, “the more I realised what a debt I had to try to repay…”

In the decades to come, Hargesheimer’s U.S. fund-raising and determination built a clinic, schools and libraries in Ea Ea, renamed Nantabu, and surrounding villages.

In 1970, their three children grown up, Hargesheimer and his late wife, Dorothy, moved to New Britain, today an out-island of the nation of Papua New Guinea, and taught the village children themselves for four years. The Nantabu school’s experimental plot of oil palm even helped create a local economy, a large plantation with jobs for impoverished villagers.

Since the war, this sort of tale has been part of my life. Remembering the war, friends and relatives who fought and survived, often with the aid of those who risked their lives to save members of the Allied Armed Forces. Remembering the debt. Remembering the war – and maintaining a commitment to fight against all the unjust and unjustified wars that followed.

Contradictions to the history and bravery of those who fought in World War 2.

A small airliner crashed into a house, killing a British pilot and 19 others after a crocodile smuggled into the aircraft in a sports bag escaped and started a panic. The plane came down despite no apparent mechanical problems during an internal flight in the Democratic Republic of Congo…

A lone survivor apparently relayed the bizarre tale to investigators.

The crocodile survived the crash, only to be dispatched with a blow from a machete…

The plane was on a routine flight from the capital, Kinshasa, to the regional airport at Bandundu when the incident unfolded, on August 25. It crashed into a house just a few hundred feet from its destination. The occupants of the property were outside at the time.

According to the inquiry report and the testimony of the only survivor, the crash happened because of a panic sparked by the escape of a crocodile hidden in a sports bag.

One of the passengers had hidden the animal, which he planned to sell, in a big sports bag, from which the reptile escaped as the plane began its descent into Bandundu.

A report of the incident said: “The terrified air hostess hurried towards the cockpit, followed by the passengers.”

The plane was then sent off-balance “despite the desperate efforts of the pilot”, said the report.

Hey, it happens to ferry boats all the time.

“Look! A nude bathing beach.” Splash.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The boss of the budget airline Ryanair has called for co-pilots to be removed from the flight deck to save money and suggested that air stewardesses could land planes in an emergency.

Michael O’Leary claimed that air stewardesses could instead be trained to land an aircraft in the event of an emergency.

In an interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine, Mr O’Leary, who has previously suggested that planes could fly with “standing-only” areas for passengers, said: “Why does every plane have two pilots?

“Really, you only need one pilot. Let’s take out the second pilot. Let the b—– computer fly it.”

When asked what would happen if the single pilot fell ill while flying a plane, he said: “If the pilot has an emergency, he rings the bell, he calls her in. She could take over.”

The idea has been ridiculed by pilots, who questioned Mr O’Leary’s commitment to passenger safety.

Patrick Smith, an experienced pilot, described the idea as “beyond preposterous”. He added: “Even in routine operations it’s important to have a second person there…”

Kate Hanni, the founder of FlyersRights.org, a passenger campaign group, said: “He insults the dignity of the flying public every time he opens his mouth.”

And as long as passengers make their booking decisions solely on price, this shitheel will continue to make money.

I bump into folks online every day who step back – as I have done – and review travel decisions based on reasonable qualities of safety, sanity, how you care to live your life and, then, maybe, what cost is required to achieve what you wish. None of which makes it likely I would ever fly Ryanair.