The Most Interesting Ground Crew in the World @krocground - Tumblr Blog

Our morning deicing operation was applauded by company, and airline management after having a four truck operation on the US Airways/American Eagle Airbus, and at least two trucks per aircraft all morning. It was also my trainee's first day as a driver (pictured left tail) We decided the photo left on our bulletin board needed some touchup.

KROC deicing.

Jet-A leak in the pump relay box through one of those wire sheaths. Do we call a plumber, electrician, or the fire department?

Being unofficially titled as the Charter Cargomaster by management, I was only given three hours of notice to put a team together to handle 12 hours of DC-9/MD80/88 cargo turns. Someone at General motors decided "three hours of notice is enough time to start shipping car parts!" I worked 23 hours that day because either nobody else could drive the forklift, or nobody was comfortable pushing the planes back from the freight building. What really took so long was the fact that this was the night that Western NY (Buffalo) got hammered by that freak snow storm, delaying the cargo trucks.

KROC

Deicer Driver training, day 1.

KROC Blue Angels private press conference, a.k.a. I was sent to fuel it with one of my coworkers, showed up early and started wandering the ANG hangar, and accidentally walked in on it.

Adding to the list of 'Cool Things I Don't Get to Do Every Day:' Taxiing a Beechjet across the airport (under supervision, of course) It helps to make friends with the company pilots. "It feels a bit different than a Piper Cherokee, doesn't it?'

Steam being sucked into an A319 engine.

#deicing #airplanes #aircraft #airbus #Airbus 319 #Airbus A319 #aviation

krocground

Had a nice little spat over the radio with some pilots this morning. They tried to leave with snow and ice covering their front (basically the whole front half of the aircraft was covered with snow and ice, with the exception of the windshield) end so I parked my deicer in front of them and…

haleyismulan

why am i not surprised. georgian’s hirings are um…interesting.

krocground

Funny you say that because a very similar incident happened years ago with another supervisor, and another Air Georgian B1900 (who wasn't a supervisor at the time), where the pilots kept demanding more Type IV fluid on the wings until the driver stopped and told them that he would not continue because there was already way too much Type IV on there, and any more would make the aircraft unsafe to fly (as too much Type IV becomes a contaminant in itself). It took an on-the-spot call to their safety director to get the pilots to back off.

Deicer VS Pilot

Had a nice little spat over the radio with some pilots this morning. They tried to leave with snow and ice covering their front (basically the whole front half of the aircraft was covered with snow and ice, with the exception of the windshield) end so I parked my deicer in front of them and blocked them from leaving until they cooperated. Me: "Air Georgian 7289 this is Iceman, are you guys configured?" 7289: "7289 is configured for deice, wings and tail only." Me: "7289, what about the snow and ice on your nose? We have to get rid of that." 7289: "Um, wings and tail only." Me: *instructs sprayer to spray the nose anyway as per the Clean Aircraft Concept, pilot flips out on us over the radio so we finish spraying the wings and tail like he said, and then I drove around and parked my deicer perpendicular to, and roughly 8-10 feet from the nose of the aircraft.* Me: "Air Georgian 7289, your wings and tail are clean, but I will not let you leave with all that snow and ice on your front end." *long pause* Me: "If you'd like to talk with your supervisor, I'd be more than happy to arrange that." 7289: *seen talking to each other for a second* 7289: "okay make it quick." Me: *Thoroughly sprays entire airplane again.* ------------------------------------ As my old supervisor used to say, "don't let 'em leave unless you'd put your mother on that plane." The Clean Aircraft Concept prohibits any aircraft (especially commercial) from taking off with any contamination, especially the frozen kind, adhering to critical surfaces, predominantly the wings, tail, sensory areas, etc. A pilot can request that the wings and tail only be focused on, but as deicers, we are trained that there is no such thing as "just wings and tail," and that if we see any contamination anywhere, we are to remove it. While the situation may not have been so dramatic were it a thin amount of frost on the nose, 7289 had severe ice and adhering snow covering the front half, and fuselage of the aircraft, with the only "clean" surfaces being the windshield, and the bottom half of the fuselage. I would not sleep at night if I were to let them take off like that, especially with passengers, and I didn't. I didn't have a moment of hesitation when I decided that physically blockading them from proceeding was going to be the way that I asserted my point to them. I was asked by upper management to write a report on them to be sent to Air Canada's safety director because the pilots were actually trying to take off like that, and I am more than happy to do so.

What an APU does for a few minutes if glycol gets sucked into it, but not bad enough where it goes ka-put. In our defense, the tail was severely iced.

JAAAAAACK

I swear, we have to be one of the few deicing contractors that has no physical training to train the deicers. No dummy plane, water-filled trucks, etc. Our training program, using today as an example, consists of sending an experienced driver (me) out into a Winter storm with a guy who hasn't worked here more than four days (and got signed off in the classroom n one day) and going "okay, hop in the bucket." The kid did great, but it's very hard for me to do my job as a driver and deicer coordinator, and talk this trainee through everything while he's spraying an airplane, and while I'm trying to be a second pair of eyes for him, talk to the pilot, my other deicers, etc. Thankfully it was not for nothing because I see this kid doing great.

Your competition isn't much competition when their only deicer, as opposed to our seven, catches fire during a maintenance test. Well then.

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The Most Interesting Ground Crew in the World