Interesting accident report

[LR25]

IDENTIFICATION
Regis#: 7031A Make/Model: R22 Description: R-22
Date: 09/10/2004 Time: 1515

Event Type: Incident Highest Injury: Minor Mid Air: N Missing: N
Damage: Unknown

LOCATION
City: HARTFORD State: CT Country: US

DESCRIPTION
ACFT AFTER DROPPING OFF A PASSENGER EXPERIENCED UNSPECIFIED MECHANICAL
TROUBLE AND BUMPED INTO THE PASSENGER AS HE WALKED AWAY. MINOR INJURIES
REPORTED. HARTFORD, CT

INJURY DATA Total Fatal: 0
# Crew: 1 Fat: 0 Ser: 0 Min: 0 Unk:
# Pass: 1 Fat: 0 Ser: 0 Min: 1 Unk:
# Grnd: Fat: 0 Ser: 0 Min: 0 Unk:

WEATHER: NOT REPORTED



OTHER DATA
Activity: Business Phase: Take-off Operation: Air Taxi (On Demand)

Departed: UNKN Dep Date: Dep. Time:
Destination: HARTFORD, CT Flt Plan: UNK Wx Briefing: U
Last Radio Cont: UNKN
Last Clearance: UNKN

FAA FSDO: WINDSOR LOCKS, CT (NE03) Entry date: 09/13/2004

 

[Vladimir Lenin]

this is f-ing hillarious

 

[rvsm410]

Probably didn't tip the driver!

 

[FracCapt]

Just a dumbas$ trying to takeoff with somebody too close, I'd bet. I'm sure the malfunction was psychological, not mechanical.

 

[dseagrav]

This reminds me of an incident that I witnessed at my employer's Internet Provider. I was friends with two of their system administration staff, who I will call P and J. (Names obscured to protect the guilty ^_^) They were located just downtown from us, so I would drop by irregularly and more or less at random to go eat lunch and complain about our customers and whatnot... Anywho, they had purchased a very expensive piece of internet routing equipment from a company named Ascend which no longer exists. It was worth around $50,000. They shipped it UPS, and it arrived with a nice boot-print in the SIDE of the box. We figure they were playing soccer with it or something. Anyway, about 3 weeks into it's life it developed a power-supply problem and would intermittenly shut itself off. It was under warranty, so J set about calling the manufacturer for a replacement. Unfortunately for him, their policy was that until the part failed entirely it could not be replaced - They apparenly had never heard of intermittent faults. Well, they fought back and forth over whether or not this should be replaced for about a month. Finally, one day, J had his fill of Ascend, and as I was arriving, he had them on the phone, as the supply in question had failed (again). While he was on hold, he told P to "Please go pull the Ascend supply from the rack and bring it here." As P did this, Ascend answered the phone and they did their normal argument over whether or not the supply should be replaced. After about 5 minutes, P arrives with the supply. J hushes P and myself (the spectators), places the supply on his desk, and pulls a large hammer out of his desk drawer. Then he put the Ascend technician on speaker-phone. "OK", J says, "Let me get this straight. You guys cannot replace this until it fails completely, right?" "Yes sir, that is correct." says Ascend. J says, "Can you guys hang on a second?" "Sure." At this point J took the supply, put it on the floor, and smashed it about 5 or 6 times with the hammer. We heard a "What the hell?" on the phone. Parts of the supply went all over the place. Then Jim dropped the hammer against the floor with a heavy thud. "You know what? I think that supply just failed completely." Silence on the phone. "Actually, I'm pretty sure of it. It's dead." Ascend says "Uh... Yeah, we think so too... Got a pen and paper? I'll give you a shipping number." Two days later they had a new power supply, and the router actually outlived the company that made it - Ascend was bought out a while later by Lucent.

Moral of the story - Sometimes, when something pisses you off, the most effective recourse is to smash it with whatever tool is available and get another one. Helicopter and Hammer both start with the same letter!