Lighter side

With all the doom and gloom around in my working life tis important to look toward to lighter side of things. Heres a couple from tonight's work shift.

Walked up to the security gate to get into the hanger. Normally the guard never even bothers to get out of his hut or even glance up. If they are a lil more on the ball they might smile and wave. As for checking our security passes, that is way too much effort for em, never mind checking our bags. Bear in mind this is an international airport, and one with a US airbase on site! Security might as well be non existent. But today the guard was standing by the gate and as I walked through. The guard stopped me. And briskly demanded I present my bag for inspection.

"what's this?" he asked pulling out a clear plastic bottle with liquid in.
"soup" I reply.
"Hmmmph" he grunts back rummaging around my bag some more before pulling out my bento box.
"what's this?" he asks again.
"My lunch" I reply.
"What you have for lunch?" he asked.
"Nothing I'm willing to swap with you mate!" I say, as I spy a sly smirk spreading across his face.

LOL, guess he's gotta break the boredom somehow.

The other incident occurred outside the terminal building on the aircraft. We were called out to a A320 on which work had to be carried out on engine #1 and in the cockpit. So there we are working away. "J" is up on the wing, over the engine ripping out bits due to be replaced and I'm running parts and tools back and forth to him while another bunch of guys are ripping up the cockpit. Suddenly this almighty "BEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPP!" rings out, causing "J" to nearly fall off the wing in fright. It was a convoy of busses filled with passengers. The driver pokes his head out the window yelling at us to move our pick-up, so he could pull up to the aircraft and drop off the passengers.

"J" yelled back incredulously asking him, "can't you see we are working on the aircraft. Don't think this plane will be ready for passengers any time soon."
"Not my problem. I need to drop these passengers off to this plane" the driver yelled back.
"Ummm, you sure? Cos this engine is in bits and the cockpit is in pieces. Its really not going to fly any time soon "J" reassured him.
"Not my problem, passengers need to get on, move the pick-up" he replied gruffly.

So in I hop into the pick-up and shift it out of the busse's way. By now the passengers are already feeling a lil odd with the hold up, not to mention pulling up next to an aircraft with its engines wide open. And the worry only got worse watching engineers wandering about, engine parts in hand, puzzled looks on faces. Their worries kicked up a notch as they walked up the stairs into the plane. Greeted to the sight of the pilot seats lying on the galley floor and various other bits of cockpit lying in the doorway. with some of the passengers you could even see horror mirrored in their eyes. But before they could proceed any further up the stairs a ground service agent came screaming and yelling his way toward us, waving his arms about indicating for the passengers to stop boarding. The service agent ran up to the bus driver's window and some angry but suppressed dialogue was exchanged. The driver slowly craned his neck out of the window and noticed the another plane parked along side us, with a full complement of aircrew waiting to greet passengers.D'oh! Wrong plane.

Just hope the passengers weren't too traumatised by the case of mistaken identity.