captainv
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2002
- Posts
- 572
after my first corporate job went TU, i pumped gas for a couple months at LZU. Back then, the Quest guys were flying C-310s, and they were my main customer on the graveyard shift.
didn't come across as a stepping stone job by any means. most of the pilots (this is early 2000) were in their 40s, had no desire to go anywhere else. one of the senior CFIs on the field finally wrangled an interview. apparently it was a little bumpy over the hills on the last leg, TRI-LZU. he was white as a ghost as he got out of the airplane, and he never bothered them about a job again. you'd better be sheet-hot on your IFR skills as well.
i recall a number of feathered props, but otherwise the 310s seemed to be in good shape.
what I remember most is the "war stories" the pilots would tell. i hope they were exaggerated, to impress the naive pilot that I was at the time.
-one guy came in with a prop feathered on the New Orleans (Lakefront) - LZU leg. i asked him how far out it had quit. About halfway, he said. Halfway TO New Orleans. (Again, this is all hearsay. For all I know, it quit on short final)
-another story: Lakefront was fogged in one night. Pea soup all the way down. He said he hit 200 feet and kept going. At 50 feet, he cut the power and floated in. Zero/zero all the way. Couldn't see the taxiways after landing, either, so the van drove out to the runway to pick up the load.
-One guy came in with a bunch of ice on the airplane one night. It was, and still is, the most ice I'd ever seen on any airplane. i expressed my surprise, and the pilot, who was from either Finland/Denmark/Sweden, told me stories about flying DC-3 freight in Scandanavia with up to 3 inches of ice on the wings. probably BS about the DC-3, but that 310 came in with ice virtually covering the entire airplane.
i also remember that some nights LabQuest (in a Navajo) would cancel for weather. I don't ever remember Quest canceling on a night that I worked, except for a mechanical.
I remember hearing they wrecked a 310 with a new pilot, sometime before I was pumping gas. went missed at LZU, missed at ATL, ran out of gas on the way to RMG.
toward the end they started getting the TBMs, but I remember hearing one wrecked in TRI (frost on the wings) and I though I heard another went down....
All of this is memory/airport grapevine from several years ago. I could be mistaken, and hope I am, on several fronts.
didn't come across as a stepping stone job by any means. most of the pilots (this is early 2000) were in their 40s, had no desire to go anywhere else. one of the senior CFIs on the field finally wrangled an interview. apparently it was a little bumpy over the hills on the last leg, TRI-LZU. he was white as a ghost as he got out of the airplane, and he never bothered them about a job again. you'd better be sheet-hot on your IFR skills as well.
i recall a number of feathered props, but otherwise the 310s seemed to be in good shape.
what I remember most is the "war stories" the pilots would tell. i hope they were exaggerated, to impress the naive pilot that I was at the time.
-one guy came in with a prop feathered on the New Orleans (Lakefront) - LZU leg. i asked him how far out it had quit. About halfway, he said. Halfway TO New Orleans. (Again, this is all hearsay. For all I know, it quit on short final)
-another story: Lakefront was fogged in one night. Pea soup all the way down. He said he hit 200 feet and kept going. At 50 feet, he cut the power and floated in. Zero/zero all the way. Couldn't see the taxiways after landing, either, so the van drove out to the runway to pick up the load.
-One guy came in with a bunch of ice on the airplane one night. It was, and still is, the most ice I'd ever seen on any airplane. i expressed my surprise, and the pilot, who was from either Finland/Denmark/Sweden, told me stories about flying DC-3 freight in Scandanavia with up to 3 inches of ice on the wings. probably BS about the DC-3, but that 310 came in with ice virtually covering the entire airplane.
i also remember that some nights LabQuest (in a Navajo) would cancel for weather. I don't ever remember Quest canceling on a night that I worked, except for a mechanical.
I remember hearing they wrecked a 310 with a new pilot, sometime before I was pumping gas. went missed at LZU, missed at ATL, ran out of gas on the way to RMG.
toward the end they started getting the TBMs, but I remember hearing one wrecked in TRI (frost on the wings) and I though I heard another went down....
All of this is memory/airport grapevine from several years ago. I could be mistaken, and hope I am, on several fronts.
