RAMP STORIES

You’ll find a lot of flying stories here, told by myself and my pilot friends. I encourage anyone, not only pilots, to submit any interesting or entertaining stories with an aviation theme. If you are or were working in maintenance, aircraft servicing or ground handling, crew scheduling, I want your stories! If you are flight attendant … I want YOUR stories!

This might be a good time to mention a couple of people who stand out in my memory:

One night as the freight was being loaded in Orlando, I noticed a young lady with “Sparky” printed on her reflective vest. I said, “How’d you get that name?”

“I was struck by lightning,” she replied. “Twice.”

After that I kept my distance from her anytime there were clouds in the sky.

And then there was the night in Wilmington, Ohio when we were pushing back for departure. It was extremely windy, downright hazardous. Just as we were being brought into position where we would be starting engines, I noticed on of our “C Containers” – Airborne’s patented freight containers – rolling across the ramp at about 40 miles an hour, headed directly for the ground marshaller who stood facing us. The container was coming at him from his back. He couldn’t see it and there was no time to warn him. He was knocked down and out. The First Officer and I were the only ones who saw him, and frankly, we thought he might be dead.  

I got on the interphone and informed the people on the ramp they had a man down. An ambulance arrived, and we took a considerable delay as he was attended to. We had good, hard-working people there in Wilmington. The salt of the earth. Many were farmers who worked their farms by day and the sort at night. I’m glad to report that the marshaller, although injured, did survive.

From time to time, though, we would have someone who was new to the job who needed a bit more training.

This one particular night, back when I was still flying the DC9, once the weight and balance calculations were done and our paperwork was crosschecked, the new person was tasked with providing the final briefing which included reference to all containers being secured and the 9G barrier net installed.

Her intent was good, if not her verbiage. When she said, “The G-9 barrel net is installed” I could tell she was new and could use some additional training.

The worst, though, was on the D Ramp in Wilmington. We had an FAA Inspector riding with us, watching everything. And a new guy on the headset on the ground. And the headset wasn’t working properly.

During a normal pushback, they would inform me that the pushback was complete, and say “Set brakes.” And then once I confirmed “Brakes set” they would disconnect the tug.

When they spoke, it was garbled and we couldn’t understand them. But we anticipated they were telling us to set brakes. Of course, that would be the night that we had an amber warning light come on during pushback. I told them “Do Not disconnect the tug. We have a warning light and may need to go back into the gate.”

Between the faulty headset and the operator being new, the message was not understood, although there was some garbled reply which I anticipated was a response to my instructions. So, thinking that we were still connected to the tug, I did not set the brakes.

I asked the First Officer to look at the Quick Reference Handbook, and together we looked at what it had to say. It referred us to the maintenance manual, which again, we both looked at. All this time, the airplane is moving across the ramp. I’m thinking the tug driver must be new, because we are going too fast.

Then, I looked up.

People on the ramp are scattering. People are waving. The marshaller is frantically signaling for me to stop. They had disconnected the tug without my approval, and we were traveling across the ramp under our own power with nobody driving.

There were people everywhere. There were fuel trucks. There were tugs. There were other airplanes loaded with jet fuel.

I slammed on the brakes.

We didn’t hit a thing.

We did in fact have to go back into the gate for maintenance. Once we were parked and the engines shut down, I grabbed my flashlight and invited the FAA inspector to accompany me for a walkaround inspection of the airplane to verify no damage.

It was poor training and poor supervision on behalf of the ramp personnel. It was a good lesson for me to maintain situational awareness at all times. What I should have done was allow the First Officer to troubleshoot the problem while I kept an eye on the situation outside the cockpit.

And it was nothing but pure luck that kept us from having a complete disaster that night.

I wrote up a thorough debrief and submitted it to the Chief Pilot. A week or so later we all received a crew letter (which thankfully did not include names) about what had happened. It was as if he had not even read my debrief. In the Chief Pilot’s crew letter, the FAA inspector was the hero who saw what happened and alerted us just in the nick of time.