Worst mishap at an FBO

[Some guy]

I was in BED about three weeks ago and saw someone attempt to drive an Expedition under the wing of a Citation X. Didnt really work out for them. But I think they ferried the a/c to ICT later that same day. Amazing the commotion it caused though.

I love it when our pilots can add a little humor into a "not so good" situation...Here is the first sentence of the discrepancy he sent us...

UPON PREFLIGHT WE FOUND A FORD EXPLORER (EDDIE BOWER EDITION) STUCK UNDER LEFT WING TIP,

Eddie Bower edition...I love it!!!

 

[Lrjtcaptain]

Landed back home after a long few days, and discover my pax still had the crew car keys. He sent me back St. Louis on that one, I thought I was done but nope, had to fly back to drop off some keys.

 

[SiuDude]

I remember back in the mid 90's there was this guy who really wanted to be a pilot so he got a job as a ramper at the FBO near his home. Among other things his job description included fueling the FedEx aircraft that came in to the airport.

Now, as most of you know, large aircraft can hold a lot of fuel and pumping 4000-5000 gallons can take a bit of time (as well as be a little boring) so our ramper takes to bringing along a bit of light reading to pass the time. Flying, AOPA Pilot, that sort of thing. Well one day he's sitting at the back of the truck reading the accident/incident reports in the latest edition of Aviation Safety, waiting patiently for the fuel to pump slowly into the plane. His mind is filled with questions about how the people he is reading about could be so stupid mixed with thoughts of how great it would be to be flying one of the planes he works with instead of fueling them.

His daydreaming is soon interrupted by the screams of a FedEx mechanic telling him to stop fueling. It seems that on this Airbus there are 2 fuel tanks in each wing with the outboard filling first followed by the inboard. In a perfect world the valve to the outboard tank closes when it becomes full allowing the fuel to then fill the inboard. Alas, we are not living in a perfect world. It seems that the valve has stuck open and instead of fuel flowing into the inboard tank it is now cascading out of the fuel vent at the tip of the wing, a fact wasted on our fueler who is busy reading his magazine and cannot see the wing tip from his seat at the rear of the truck anyway. Pandelirium ensues and the clean up begins.

Fat forward a few months. The truth of fuelers actions that fateful night come to light when FedEx refuses to chip in for the cost of the clean up, saying it was the fuelers fault. Our heartbroken fueler is terminated and disappears from sight. Nobody is really sure what has come of him, although there are unconfirmed reports that he is now flying RJ's somewhere down south.

It figures, those regionals will hire anybody.

Last I heard, this former ramper has over 4000 hours now and he's stuck in the right seat with no upgrade in sight.

 

[Say Again Over]

Nothing major, a few fueling glitches with the MU2, but it is bad, the thing that really stressed me was an FBO in Canada that pushed our King Air 200 into the back of the hanger, bent part of the elevator. They were real proud of their hanger, something like $200.00 per night. Well of course these a$$holes never mentioned the hanger rash, when I spotted the damage I came uncapped, I told them what they could do with their hanger fee and I also sent them the bill. I'm sure they were praying that I didn't see it and just fly off.:uzi:

 

[Wankel7]

FBO lineguy was bringing my FO back to the cargo ramp...the lineguy actually told him he does not like to bring people to that side of the field because they never tip.

LOL....yeah buddy...good way to get a tip

 

[USMCmech]

At SAT our guys were towing a MD-11 and hit a Lear 45 elevator with the winglet. It completely twisted the vertical stab. The Lear had to be disasembled and trucked away.

There were some VERY unhappy people about that one.

 

[Learsforsale]

At SAT our guys were towing a MD-11 and hit a Lear 45 elevator with the winglet. It completely twisted the vertical stab. The Lear had to be disasembled and trucked away.

There were some VERY unhappy people about that one.

We have had several incidents of vehicles running into aircraft. We had an older gentleman that held down the night shift for several years. But he was getting a little too old, and started taking lessons from the Florida retiree school of driving. He was driving the beloved golf cart around the ramp looking for errant cones and chocks when he failed to notice the Falcon 50 that he was rapidly approaching. He ended up hitting the trailing edge of the right airleron at full speed, slicing open his head, and completely decapitating the golf cart.

We had another vehicle to aircraft accident several months later when a lineman was parking a plane using the "Follow me" van. He pulled through the empty space and parked the van at an angle. He throw it in Park and hopped out to marshell in the aircraft. He did not completely reach the "P" for park and shifter slipped back to "R" and proceeded drive in reverse until it was stopped by a Cit X. Line man was terminated in a drawn out way.

 

[wmuflyguy]

When I worked as a line-guy in college at the univeristy. Had a guy towing a 172, he deciede to drive it at soemthing like 15 mph and the tow bar broke away frome the nose gear.

The 172's torque links snaps and it does an abrupt right turn right into 2 other parked 172's. I was standing in the hanger waiting for this guy to bring me the airplane and heard a loud bang, knew that wasn't good. The line guy was not fired.

A couple months later he was on a solo flight and on his 7th landing, he lands side loaded goes of the side of the runway and shears the left main gear off the 172 he was flying. As far as I know he was still a line guy working on his Instrument rating. His nickname was "crunchy".

 

[NYYfan]

had a old lear 23 i think it was land on a sunday and the crew went off to the hotel pretty quickly.

next morning i was in for the 5am shift when i happen to look out of the hangar window and see the lear with the left wing tip about 8ft up in the air and the right wing tip 4 inches off the ground. Had to wake up the pilot and it took about 350 gallons to even it out.

Story i heard from the guys i worked with was that my old boss had a md 83 on the ramp and had to dump the lav so he hooked up with our lav cart which maybe holds 10 gallons. Well i guess about 10 seconds after pulling the chain the connection broke and the boss got covered head to tail in the blue juice.

Now we fast forward a few years and he and i had to dump a lav on a falcon 2000 so we were both under the plane and he takes the cap off and let me just say ive never moved so fast. I didnt get a drop on me, he unfortunatley does not have good luck.

 

[dskflyr]

Short Air Force Career

During the mid to late 90's a young Security Police Airman managed to drive his Malibu police car under the wing/fuselage of an F-15. Ouch@!!!