War stories

[Fly BI]

Ok freightdoggs, how about some war stories from the crappier side of "professional flying". I'll start:

Last week while taking off, I smelled smoke in the cockpit. as it was my leg, I alerted the captain to my suspicions. In his broken english (it is not his first language) he said " no smell". The odor got worse and I queried him again, to which he repilied "no smoke, keep flying". By now I had an awful, acrid taste in my mouth. I forcefully said that there was smoke in the cockpit and I was turing off the heater. Using his flashlight to scan the C/B panel behind me, he saw a C/B jetting smoke. When he couldn't pull it out (old P.O.S. C/B panel) he isolated the overhead switch to shut off power to the circuit. Then he instructed me to continue flying and that we would not return to the airport.

When maintenance inspected behind the C/B panel, they found a lot of fire damage and heat warping to the wire bundles.

 

[barnyard]

Upon landing one day, my elevator control was freezing up and sticking. it wasn;t a pretty landing, but made it back to the ramp just fine. So I caled the office and informed them of the problem I just had, and suggested i grab some silicone spray from the nearest mech; it was probly just my control column sticking (piper). But the mechanic said no just stay there; we'll dispatch an aircraft and i'll come down to take a look. So imediately upon arrival the mechanic opens up the plastic surrounding the stabilator area and started looking around... but didn;t say he found anything abnormal. So he sprayed the coulmn with some silicone and flew back to base...

To this day I swear this guy must of had had a wrench go missing and couldn't figure out just what a/c it was in!

 

[Rook]

Got paged for a FR8 trip in my first year with my old outfit. The dispatcher told me "your captain isn't here yet so go preflight and he'll be right out." After preflighting the 'ol beech an old crusty guy walks up to me cussing every other word shaking my hand and telling me to help him get on board cuz his legs are all shot to he**. Yup ol Connie K himself showed up and we flew from YIP to nowhere in particular canada. Had a great time listening to his stories even though I had to scream at him to have a conversation because..."I got so much FU**ING time in these airplanes I cant hear a GD thing!"

Rook