Crazy (and fatal) ground incidents with planes !
Moss - bikes and planes didn't do you in ! Glad you made it, to tell that tale.
First time I flew out of Orange County/John Wayne I ended up chatting with a senior AA Maintenance Engineer who was hitching a ride on a mostly empty AA plane.
While I'm not a nervous flyer, we got chatting after he noticed me sitting up straighter and looking around (likely had a quizzical look on my face) just after wheels-up.
He explained that the "poor peasants" that lived nearby had successfully sued to get the planes to throttle way back, pretty much immediately after lift-off, to cut noise. The plane was running fine, but I'd never been in a plane that cut power that fast/close to the ground after take-off, so it caught my attention.
One thing that drove him crazy - ground-crew hitting parked planes with vehicles. The least bit of contact, and the plane is out of service (I was glad to hear) till checked out. A tiny scrape on a wing - big $ and long downtime....
Situational Awareness (where this thread started); it usually matters, but stakes don't get much higher than with planes/choppers....
Rgds, D.
Moss - bikes and planes didn't do you in ! Glad you made it, to tell that tale.
First time I flew out of Orange County/John Wayne I ended up chatting with a senior AA Maintenance Engineer who was hitching a ride on a mostly empty AA plane.
While I'm not a nervous flyer, we got chatting after he noticed me sitting up straighter and looking around (likely had a quizzical look on my face) just after wheels-up.
He explained that the "poor peasants" that lived nearby had successfully sued to get the planes to throttle way back, pretty much immediately after lift-off, to cut noise. The plane was running fine, but I'd never been in a plane that cut power that fast/close to the ground after take-off, so it caught my attention.
One thing that drove him crazy - ground-crew hitting parked planes with vehicles. The least bit of contact, and the plane is out of service (I was glad to hear) till checked out. A tiny scrape on a wing - big $ and long downtime....
Situational Awareness (where this thread started); it usually matters, but stakes don't get much higher than with planes/choppers....
Rgds, D.