Plane collision with tractor

3930dave · Jul 25, 2021

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.

MossRoad · Jul 25, 2021

3930dave said:
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.

I'll probably die choking on a piece of donut.

Jstpssng · Jan 1, 2022

Just visiting old threads, and thought this one was worth reviving.

3Ts · Jan 2, 2022

Most of the accidents mentioned here relate to situational awareness. When I was flying for the military back in the 70's our normal crew complement was 7 (C-141 transports). There was an accident where the crew flew into the side of a mountain on approach to the runway. There was a crew of 25 on board which consisted of the regular crew, flight instructors, and flight examiners. The tower had given them an approach vector which was incorrect and they blindly followed it into the mountain. One of the things the instructors and examiners kept harping on was to monitor the approaches as well to be sure this didn't happen, but ...