Eric Burdon and the Animals

Eric Burdon and the Animals

Back in the mid or late 90’s, around one Saint Paddy’s weekend the rock band Eric Burdon and the Animals performed a few shows at Bruce Willis’s Hailey Mint Bar. I attended one of the events, even dancing for a while, and was impressed that these old-timers still ‘had it’ as they put on a festive show, and played a number of nice recognizable classics.

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At the time, I was working at Horizon Airlines as a ramp agent, and while working in the back room early the next morning, I noticed several musical instruments in their cases starting to roll through the bag well. Traveling bands often have suitcases and trunks with souvenir stickers from every end of the world patched all over them, and as this band’s distinctive checked luggage continued poring through, I edged my way up to Horizon’s front counter to gain a closer peek at the rock stars.

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The Animals looked a little worse for wear, and I had a vibe that they probably had stayed up late partying, probably even gaining less sleep than I had. It wasn’t even 7a.m. yet, but the band probably needed an early start in order to prepare for their next gig.

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As I worked my way back to the bag well, I noticed that a large duffel bag in the middle of the band luggage was leaking some type of dark liquid. It looked bad enough that I should attend to it; because as well as tarnishing whatever was in that particular bag, it had to potential to ruin other passenger luggage. Using a bit of the self-empowerment that the Horizon Air leaders often encouraged, I zipped open the bag and discovered that the culprit was a slowly leaking bottle of rum. In transit, the cap had become slightly cracked and as we didn’t have a fitting replacement cap that size in stock in our provisions cabinet, I decided to use a bit of duct tape to stem the leak. While doing so, the thought flashed, “This is exactly, what I would want somebody to do for me, if I had a bottle of cheap rum, leaking at the airport.”

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Following on that thought, I figured it best to page the band member to explain what happened. I walked to our front counter and asked Jane to page the bass-player from what had now become a bustling early morning crowd. He came forth in his ragged-glory and I started to explain that I had taped his rum bottle to stop the leak, and that the rum was certifiably STILL GOOD!

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Somehow though, stumbling through this hazy and cacophonic chaos, he misinterpreted my intent, and I’ll never forget, he asked, “WELL, CAN WE DRINK IT NOW THEN?” I re-explained that my intent was to show him that I personally had duct-taped his rum-bottle secure, so that it would not soak any more of his clothing, and wanted him to know this, so that he wouldn’t suspect that somebody had tampered with it along the merry way!

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And he seemed happy enough with that.

Ancient Airport Anecdotes

Ancient Airport Anecdotes

In my years of working around aircraft here in Sun Valley, I developed a respect for the inherent danger of turning props, fuel trucks and deicing equipment. Back then, while deicing hundreds of planes so they could fly safe, I sometimes wondered as to what extent future clean-up crews would need to go to excavate tarmac and the contaminated dirt beneath; if we ever relocated the airport. Now as that day approaches; it will be interesting to see how the airport authority handles this, as well as seeing what safety standards they set in place for the new airport, regarding innovative heated deicing booths with environmentally safe collectors for the polluted fluids.

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Meanwhile, while recently recounting some old stories about airport safety, a friend suggested that I write a few of these down for the public’s enjoyment. So here goes:

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While first training to be airline worker in Sun Valley, my co-workers told me about an incident involving Horizon Air’s initial flight into the Wood River Valley. Back then, Horizon was flying trendy 17-passenger Fairchild Metroliners. They had a pilot and co-pilot, but no flight attendant. If you were above average height you would need to duck to negotiate the way to your seat. The Metros had two luggage compartments; one in the rear or aft of the plane and a second smaller one with doors on each side of the nose. If you were a ramp worker, you needed to remember that the luggage compartment in the nose of the aircraft did not pressurize upon takeoff. Therefore, you did not load objects affected by high altitude, especially pets into the nose!

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Milt Kuolt was the primary founder of Horizon Air and the 1981 christening flight into Sun Valley was a blue ribbon ceremony. Mr. Kuolt also owned Elkhorn Resort; thus he was following the same successful formula Averill Harriman used transporting Union Pacific railroad passengers into Sun Valley. For that first flight though, someone had forgot that basic safety tenet and loaded the founders’ dog into the front of the aircraft. Fortunately, the dog only had a slight case of the bends and was resilient enough to shake it off after a few hours.

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With this in mind, it’s remarkable how for my own first training flight, a comparable mistake almost occurred involving another Metro. It was November of ’93 and I had just returned from Seattle after passing the rigorous exams Horizon gives to prospective employees. During our training session out on the ramp, three co-workers introduced me to our pilots and then showed me the protocol for loading the aircraft. We secured the luggage doors properly, and although we were under pressure for the plane to leave on time, some last second passengers arrived and our ticket counter kindly decided to accommodate them. Suddenly, my co-workers started running around the ramp in a tremendous rush so we could maintain an untarnished on time record. As I was being trained to haul the GPU away from the props after we jumpstarted the plane, I noticed one of the workers open the doors to the nose of the aircraft in case we needed to store some carry-ons. The passengers got on, we started the plane and it went down the taxiway in good time.

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However, a few minutes later the plane suddenly returned to our ramp area. Turns out that in our great rush to get the plane out on time, nobody had re-secured the far nose door! Further compounding the safety issue with this door, was that there no “open door” indicator sensor attached to the nose doors for this model of aircraft. Furthermore, from the cockpit it was impossible to see if the Metro nose doors were secure. Fortunately, an alert airport tower controller noticed the door swinging open as the Metro approached the runway from the taxiway and radioed our pilots about the problem. I shudder to think what could have happened had that plane actually taken off with the nose door open. And finally, when it did take off securely, I’ll never forget that after the co-pilot called in his times over the radio, he added: “And way to teach that new guy the ropes, Darcie”![1]

To be continued…

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[1] Not her real name.

Senator Stevens does Alaska travel industry a disservice.

Sen. Ted Stevens claimed in his defense that it was too difficult to monitor his remodeled home improvements, due to the long distance required traveling back and forth to Alaska. As a former employee of Alaska’s sister company Horizon, and avid reader of their in-flight magazines, I remembered reading an article there, that claimed just the opposite.

That piece of writing boasted how it’s possible to have a power lunch with your Senator in Washington D.C. and still have plenty of time to jet to a quick Seattle layover, before proceeding onto Anchorage and stretching your legs there for an hour, and then zipping up to Fairbanks to catch the Northern Lights the same evening!

Alaska Airlines stuck in there after 9-11, when right as they were preparing to open, Washington’s Reagan Airport shut down for several weeks. Senator Stevens needs to apologize to Alaskans and Alaska Airline employees for besmirching the high quality level service of miracle air travel, which they consistently provide.

An early hair-raisin incident

We had a serious aircraft incident during my first day working at Horizon Air. It was November ’93 and I was happy as a clam to be working in this seemingly great atmosphere, compared to the sometimes-stuffy cab job where I had been toiling.

Back then, during slack season we mostly operated 17-seater propeller aircraft. We packaged the bulk of the luggage into the rear of the aircraft; always counting the bags and weighing the freight so our pilots could determine weights and balances for their official manifests. Besides the ‘Aft’ area, the nose section of the aircraft also held a small package stash area, where we usually stuffed the oversized carry-on items into as carefully as we could.

However, this first day of mine, our small ramp crew seemed to be in an immense rush. I later found out that the company attached great importance to having their aircraft embark on time, as this info was entered into a national database and then sometimes featured in newspapers like USA TODAY. Anyhow, as we received the passenger carry-ons, a handful of travelers came through security at the last minute. Apparently, one of my co-workers opened the far-side nose door anticipating more last second bags. We got everyone on quick and they congratulated themselves for getting the craft out on time under this slight pressure.

Onliest thing was that about five minutes later the small plane taxied back into our ramp area. I asked what was wrong and the operations manager said that the tower noticed while our place was taxiing out, one of its front doors was ajar! While the plane made its quick pit stop, one of the agents secured the door and sent it back out.

Usually after planes left and the pilots adjusted to their regular flight path, they would call in their gate departure and flight departure times. I’ll never forget this incident, because immediately after the pilot called in his times he also added, “Way to show that new guy the ropes, Debbie!”

I later heard that on the christening flight into Sun Valley back in the early 80’s somebody had loaded the founder of the airline’s dog into the same jinxed front section. The problem was that this section was not pressurized and his dog came out with a slight case of the bends, but then supposedly recovered after a day.

The other problem with the design of those early aircraft is that the company had never installed any “door ajar” red flag indicators connected between the pilot dashboard and the two nose section doors. Evidently, the pilots could not see the problem either, from the way their seats were positioned.

An early garbage e-mail

One of my earliest e-mail experiences occurred in 1994, when I worked for Horizon Airlines. Though it wasn’t especially inspiring, it was memorable. As a multitasking ramp-worker, one of my duties included emptying the trash from the aircraft. More often than not, as the flight attendant handed us his or her rubbish, the bags would leak onto the stairs leading out from the plane. After witnessing dozens of these syrupy incidents, it became clear that we needed to take some simple measures to improve this safety and health hazard.

I wrote a letter to corporate headquarters, suggesting that we conduct some tests, using higher quality garbage bags. After a few weeks, one of our managers handed me a three-page printout, which consisted mostly of middle managers e-mailing each other back and forth, mostly making wisecracks about my suggestion. This left a bad impression on me. Not only that, I wondered if it was; a glimpse of what this company was evolving into; another fat-cat corporation, overstuffed with middle managers piddling around their cushy desks, while being heavily subsided by our government.

This was the first time I worked at a place, where the corporate headquarters was in a separate state from the job. This did not seem healthy. In one of their first cost-cutting measures, they slashed our stations highly qualified safety-training officer. Soonafter, one of the new employees almost walked into a running airplane plop as he tried throwing the GPU’s electrical cord out of the passenger pathway. When Skippy our (corporate-tool) manager heard about this, the best he could do was mark a “must read” onto his office board in bold chalk that proclaimed, “Do not walk into the airplane props!”

Several other noteworthy incidents along these same lines occurred, that I would like to write about soon.