The Bridge of Grant County

Crittenden is a small town in Grant County, Kentucky. Interstate Highway I-75 passes through the county and there is an exit for the town. Near that exit a railroad bridge passes over the Interstate highway. As long as there are airplanes and bridges; people will be flying airplanes under bridges. In the majority of cases, there is some FAR (Federal Air Regulation) that prohibits the activity but that has never been a sufficient deterrent to prevent it from happening.

This story involves none, one or maybe two flights underneath the bridge described above. The highway under the bridge was under construction at the time of these flights but it was paved and ready to be opened to traffic soon. It was a rainy Sunday morning and the pilot's lounge at the FBO was filled with real pilots, student pilots, wannabe pilots, hanger pilots and a few other liars. The weather was forecast to improve to VFR (Visual Flight Rules) conditions in the early afternoon so the weekend fliers were just waiting until they could fly legally. While they were waiting, they was seeing who could tell the best story (lie).

One seasoned CFI (Certified Flight Instructor) had a reputation for being a very efficient story teller. He was spinning a yarn about being with a student down in Grant County where the railroad bridge crossed over the new highway being built. Conveniently, the student was not present to back up his story. It seems that he simulated an engine failure to see how the student would handle the emergency situation. Since it was a single engine training plane, the proper course of action is to find a suitable flat place that you can glide to and hopefully make a landing that you can walk away from. The student chose the unopened highway as an ideal place for an emergency landing and proceeded to do it. When the instructor was satisfied with the way the student handled the situation, he restarted the engine and abandoned the landing approach. That was when (according to his story) he realized that he didn't have enough room to climb high enough pass over the bridge. His only choice was to put the nose down and fly under it. He swore the student pilot to secrecy so it wouldn't do anyone any good to try and verify his story.

Also in the room, there happened to be a Captain for a large airline who was also an ex fighter pilot. He had a rather low tolerance level for flying stories that couldn't be verified by a reliable witness. He made a remark about the instructor's story being in the same category as something you avoid stepping in while walking through a field where bulls are grazing. The instructor retaliated by claiming that the captain had gotten so used to autopilots and copilots and electronic gadgets that he had forgotten about "real" flying like he did when he was a fighter pilot. The insults flew back and forth until the captain declared that "if you and that student flew under that bridge, I'll take the same airplane and student and fly under it inverted". Inverted is airplane talk for upside down.

This was a challenge neither party could walk away from and save face. The room was totally quiet as the captain and instructor just stared at each other. Who would blink first? That is when the FAA came to the rescue. There was an Air Traffic Controller in the room that did some moonlighting for us as a CFII. That is an instructor that teaches instrument flying. When he stood up and walked to the center of the room, we thought that he would give them both an out by telling them that they could lose their pilot's certificate for flying under the bridge and he would just forget about the instructors story and not file any complaint against him.

We were all surprised when he said that he thought the challenge was a good idea except without the student on board. He had a pilot scheduled for a instrument flying lesson that afternoon and they could be in a position to witness the captain flying under the bridge inverted. He suggested that the captain would agree to believe the instructors story if he surveyed the situation and decided it was safe to fly under the bridge inverted. It seemed to be solution worthy of King Solomon. Quite a few wagers were made concerning whether the captain would do it or back out.

Soon the weather cleared and the FAA guy and the pilot learning instrument flying took off in the instrument training aircraft and positioned their aircraft where they could see the bridge. The captain took off in the regular training plane and flew to the location. He lined up with the long straight stretch of highway and flew towards the bridge at an altitude of about 100 feet. When it looked like he was going to fly right into the side of the bridge, he rolled inverted, flew under the bridge, rolled back to normal and headed back to the airport.

Now the trainee pilot with the FAA instructor was under the hood the whole time. That is a device worn when you are learning how to fly on instruments. He could not see anything outside of the aircraft; just the instrument panel. So there was still just the captain and the FAA guy to verify the story. We found out months later that the captain hadn't been a fighter pilot at all; he had flown cargo planes in the military. In fact he had flown in the same unit as the FAA guy and they had been buddies.

And that's the truth!

Bowinkle T. Propwash       

Setting Aviation Records

Back in the era when airline routes and fares were regulated, flight attendants were regulated also. They had to be young, single and beautiful. With specifications like that it was natural that a whole folklore would develop about their exploits that had nothing to do with aviation. The books and movies about their romantic escapades abounded. Ask any parent that worked at a major airline terminal in the fifties or sixties what their worse fear about their daughter was and you would get the same answer. She may decide to be a stewardess. It is hard to guess how many teenage girls got sent off to convents, boarding schools or family farms in Kansas because they mentioned that as their ambition.

Of course this stereotype was exaggerated. United Airlines and TWA both claimed to have a stewardess on their payroll that was a virgin. American Airlines and Delta both said the claim was untrue but no one could prove it one way or another.

This story is about a stewardess that worked for a small regional airline that we will just call ABC to protect the families of the pilots that flew for them in the early sixties. The stewardess probably doesn't care whether or not I use her real name but I will just call her Jane Doe to be safe.

Jane lived with four other ABC stewardae in a stew zoo about two miles from the airport where they were based. The five of them shared the rent on the rather spacious apartment and they were well known to all airport employees for the many rowdy parties they hosted. Jane was strikingly beautiful and had coal black hair, cobalt eyes and a figure that made the average Hollywood sex kitten look like a tomboy. She bragged that she had never had to get her own room on layovers.

ABC flew the DC-3 and the normal crew was a pilot, a copilot and the stewardess. The airline had arrangements with hotels located at or near the airports they served. They would pay the hotel for one single and one double room. The idea was that the single room was for the stewardess and the male crew members would use the  double. The actual arrangement was usually the stewardess and one male crew member in the double and the other male crew member (that lost the coin toss) in the single. Often they would switch in the middle of the night to be fair. The more adventurous crews only used the double room and arranged a kickback with the hotel for the other room. The hotel could bill the airline and also rent the room to someone else and get paid twice. They would split this money with the airline crew. The real adventurous crews only used the single room and got a bigger kick back for freeing up the double room to rent to someone else. There were also some stewardesses that would not stay in the same room with the male crew members. They used the single room to make some non-taxable income in addition to their paltry airline salary.

Jane was a specialist. She would only stay in a room with a captain. Copilots could only dream about her. This didn't make her very popular with copilots but it did motivate them to do everything they needed to do to work up to that fourth stripe. There was a rumor that her four roommates did a lot to keep the copilots from feeling left out. Most stewardesses would soon find one crew that they liked best and try to fly with them as often as they could. Many of these preferences resulted in marriages which ended the stewardesses flying career. Jane bid different routes every month and seemed to try to avoid flying with the same captain very often. Several captains tried to swap flights just to be with her again but she would usually find out and swap flights herself to avoid them.

Needless to say she was quite the talk about the airport for several months. One night I went into the employee cafeteria about 3 am for a cup of coffee. There was a crowd of people around the employee bulletin board. I pushed in to see what the interest was. It was neatly typed on ABC official letterhead paper.

I Jane Doe attest that as of 2 am tonight I have slept with every Captain on the ABC line. Look out American, here I come!

And that's the truth

Bowinkle T Propwash    

The Height of Wagering

CVR’s (Cockpit Voice Recorders) have taken a lot of fun out of flying for the cockpit crews. The early ones would only record the last 30 minutes of the flight so you could get your overnight negotiations with the stewardess done early in the flight and there wouldn't be any voice record of it for the desk flying, ground pounding, busy bodies in the flight standards department. But before CVR’s, you didn’t have to worry about what you said in the cockpit unless a fellow crew member ratted you out.

This story is about those days without CVR’s when AA was starting to phase out their magnificent DC-6B’s with the passenger door always on the right side instead of the left like all other airlines. They had just started flying the wonderful Convair 990 on the Idlewild to Greater Cincinnati to Houston route. The redeye schedule for this flight landed at Cincinnati about 3am.  One beautiful clear night I had finished fueling the EAL Saint Pete flight about 2:30 and decided to go visit a buddy in the radar room.

The radar room I visited was the home of the Airport Surveillance Radar (ASR) radar. This radar gave heading (azimuth) information but did not have any altitude measuring ability like the Precision Approach Radar (PAR) at a few busy airports and military bases. The ground controller would give the pilot heading corrections right down to the touchdown point. He/she would also advise what the aircraft altitude should be as the aircraft made the approach. The ground controller could not actually monitor the altitude; just tell the pilot how high he should be at that point in the approach. Cincinnati airport had just built a new runway with an ILS (Instrument Landing System) and the pilots preferred that to the ASR approach. The controller couldn’t force the pilot to make a radar approach but they often asked them to do it as a favor so they could stay in practice.

My buddy had never done an approach with a jetliner since they had just been landing at Cincinnati for a few days. Their approach speed was a bit faster than the propliners and that would keep him on his toes.  It was a clear night so an instrument approach wasn’t really necessary but maybe the captain would indulge him. I got settled in the radar room in the observer seat where an FAA trainer would sit with a new controller. My buddy called up to the tower cab and asked them to see if AA Flight 2 would accept an ASR approach. We had a monitor in the radar room so we could hear the communications between the approach controller, tower, and ground control. They were all the same person at this hour of the morning.

Soon AA2 was handed off from Indianapolis Center and reported to Cincinnati approach control that he was at the Mount Healthy intersection at 29000 MSL.  Lots of captains were stubborn about using the new fangled Flight Level nomenclature. The approach controller asked if he would agree to a ASR approach. He surprised us when he not only turned it down but asked for a visual approach. The wind was calm but they had been directing the little traffic they has to land towards the north on Runway 36. Approach control cleared him out of 29000 and to report over the Dry Ridge VORTAC at 10000 for a visual approach to Runway 36. The captain really surprised us when he came back and asked to land to the south on Runway 18 straight in from his present position. There was really no reason the controller could refuse his request and there was no other traffic. Now Mount Healthy intersection is about about 25 miles from the approach end of Runway 18 and he was about 5 miles high. That meant he was going to lose a mile of altitude for every 5 miles he traveled over the ground. He would be traveling about 200 miles per hour so he would be on the ground in about 7 or 8 minutes.

We were sure the passenger's ears would all be popping with a decent that fast but that was the captain’s discretion. The crew had to walk right by the radar room on the way to AA flight OPS so we propped the door open and waited on them. Soon the captain, who looked like he had just stepped off the set of a John Wayne movie, came sauntering down the hallway. My buddy stopped him and asked him if he had some kind of emergency that he needed to get on the ground so quickly.

The captain grinned and replied. “The copilot bet me $20 I couldn’t do it”

.

And that’s the truth!

Bowinkle T. Propwash  

Away in the Hanger

I  hope you all have enjoyed this Christmas day. In the middle of all the eating and gift exchanges, I sure hope you remember what the celebration is really all about. I always think about all the pilots, ground staff, and others that miss being with their families on the holiday to make it possible for the rest of us to be with our families. We sure don't want to forget all those those that don't get to be with their loved ones because they are serving their country to keep it free for the rest of us.

When I started hanging out at the airport and got myself hired as a line boy; I always volunteered to work on Christmas day. Most of the other employees had kids and such and there was no good reason for them to be at the airport. The owner didn't mind this arrangement and I could always call someone in if I needed any help. It was always a slow day anyway. The big air taxi rush was a few days before and a few days after Christmas day. Corporate flying was at a complete standstill and there just wasn't any transient traffic. The scheduled airlines had their own ground service facilities. Several Christmas days I was on the clock all day and never sold a gallon of avgas or saw another human being, except when Dad would bring me a bushel basket full of leftovers from granny's big family dinner.

The Christmas Day of this this story was probably 1961 or 1962 but I can't remember for sure which. I know it was before JFK was assassinated and after he was inaugurated. It was a normal Christmas Day and the airport was dead except for the few scheduled airline takeoffs and landings. About mid morning, I was surprised to hear the sound of a large aircraft approaching our hanger ramp. Before I could even get to the window to look out, the phone rang. It was the the control tower telling me that a Navy R5D was coming my way and wanted fuel service. This was most unusual for several reasons. We had very few military customers because we were only 30 air miles from a very large air force base and the military liked to use their own facilities. But ooccasionally we would have a ANG or MAC aircraft for some unknown reason.

Usually we would use two line men to service a large aircraft. One would work the wing and the other would work the ground. This was long before single point fueling and the gas hose had to be dragged across the wing to each fuel tank - very similar to putting gas in your car. The ground guy would make sure everything was properly grounded to avoid sparks, drain the various sumps to check for fuel contamination and watch the meter on the pump to make sure the correct number of gallons was pumped in. I didn't bother calling in a second man because the military crew chief on board would always take care of the ground duties. On some occasions they would do the whole fueling operation and I would just watch and take care of the payment paperwork. That was always more complicated than fueling the aircraft.

I pushed the portable steps up to the aircraft boarding door when all 4 propellers had stopped. When I opened the door, I was a bit surprised to be met by a high ranking Navy officer in full dress uniform. I  stepped aside to allow him to descend the steps. I waited at the top of the steps for a long time and no one else came out out of the airplane. Finally the Admiral hollered at me from the ramp. "Can I get some fuel here?" I quickly regained my composure and replied. "Sure thing, I was just waiting for your crew chief." I was amazed when he told me he was the only person on the aircraft.

Now it is physically possible for a single pilot to operate a large 4 engine aircraft such as a R5D (Navy designation for Air Force C-54). In fact, drug runners love this aircraft to import cocaine from Columbia because one good pilot can fly it and it holds a lot of cargo. The unusual thing was a military operation without a full crew including copilot, navigator, radio operator and crew chief. I guess an admiral can do pretty much what he wants.

I told him I would have to call for some help. He seemed to be in a big hurry and said he would help me. We had some coveralls in the office to protect his uniform and he certainly knew exactly what he was doing. We finished the fueling in about a half hour and I was dreading the endless forms we would have to fill out. I almost passed out when he pulled a wad of one hundred dollar bills out of his flight bag and paid cash - including a generous tip. Soon he was on his way. He was already cranking up the third engine while I was still rolling the steps away from the airplane.

We couldn't listen in the UHF frequencies the military uses. I called the control tower on the land line and asked what destination he had filed for. It was none of my business; I was just being nosy. I got another big shock when the tower told me he wasn't on a flight plan. The weather was suitable for VFR flight but the military is always files an IFR flight plan.

So what did I witness? An eccentric admiral going home to visit his family for Christmas? Some top secret spy mission? A digruntled admiral defecting to the Russians? I paid attention to the news for several days but never got a clue about what this strange Christmas day flight was all about.

And that's the truth!

Bowinkle T. Propwash

Dead Passengers

In part 135 (air taxi) operations you find yourself flying all kinds of things to all kinds of places. I worked for a big one back in the sixties and the flagship of our fleet was a military surplus C-45G. The civilian version of this aircraft is the venerable Beechcraft Model 18. Most airport bums know them as just a Twin Beech and in the sixtes there was at least one based at almost every airport in North America. With the exception of the DC-3, they are probably the workingest aircraft in history. They have been put on floats and skis; converted to tricycle gear configuration and used for hauling everything from apples to zebras.

One of the things we flew often was dead people. A funeral director would always bring the deceased to the aircraft and load the casket and body. There were always arrangements for an undertaker to unload them at the destination airport. Our Twin Beech didn't have a large cargo door and sometimes the undertaker would have to take the lid off the casket, lay the corpse on a stretcher, put the bottom of the casket in the airplane, return the body to the casket and then reinstall the lid. We usually didn't watch this gruesome procedure and waited until the the plane was loaded before we crawled over the casket to the cockpit to fly to the destination.

One dark night we got a call about 1am to fly a body to Atlanta. I checked the weather and it was suitable for our IFR minimums so I called in one of our other pilots. Our Part 135 operations manual required 2 pilots on night IFR flights in the Twin Beech. In the mean time I got the line boys to help me remove the passenger seats from the airplane to make room for the casket. Our aircraft cabin had 3 seats down the left side and 4 seats down the right side. The door was where the 4th seat would have been on the left side. We didn't bother removing the last seat on the right side since it usually didn't interfere with loading the casket.

This particular night we decided to go ahead and get situated in the cockpit before the body was loaded so we wouldn't have to climb over the coffin. That is the reason we weren't privy to the arrangement the undertaker made with our line boy. The body was actually in a temporary coffin since the family had purchased the casket they wanted in Atlanta. It only took about 10 minutes to load the deceased into the airplane and the line boy came around to the nose of the aircraft to give us a thumbs up that the door was secured and we could start the engines and taxi out to the runway.

It was a classic night from a low budget horror movie. Driving rain, thunder and lighting in the distance and a howling wind. We got our clearance and ATC had given us 6000 feet. We had asked for 10000 or 12000 in hopes of a smoother ride. I tried to argue with them but the best they would do was tell me to ask again when we were over Knoxville. Now the autopilot hadn't worked on this aircraft since the Korean War so it was going to be some hardcore manual flying because of the weather.  I was glad LH, one of our most experienced pilots was with me. We were both going to be busy.

The takeoff and climb out were normal and the chop wasn't as bad as I expected. About a half hour from Knoxville the weather started breaking up and I decided that I wouldn't even bother asking ATC for higher. It could even be rougher up higher. Weather forecasting was just as inaccurate in the 1960's as it is now. As we approached Chattanooga I cancelled our IFR flight plan; we were solid VFR and I didn't want to fool with all the position reports and stuff.  I gave the airplane to LH and was just going to relax and enjoy the rest of the ride.

There wouldn't be any story if we had waited to get in the cockpit after the corpse was loaded. But now we were on a long final approach to the Atlanta airport. LH was flying and I was handling the radio and check list. He called for flaps 20 when I heard another voice and it was NOT someone on the radio. A human being - I hoped - was standing behind us in the cockpit doorway. LH turned white as sheet and covered his face with both hands. I don't know what that was for - probably some instinctive protective reaction. I'd never been in a airplane with a corpse standing in the cockpit doorway either but I instinctively grabbed the controls and took over flying the airplane. The ghost seemed confused by our reaction to his presence.

Of course you have already figured it out. The undertaker was escorting the body. He had been sitting in that seat that we didn't remove. When he recognized the lights of Atlanta, he came up to the cockpit to see if he could watch us make the landing. We were almost to the touchdown point by the time he explained everything and we recovered from our shock. Technically, we should have sent him back to his seat and seat belt for the landing. There wasn't enough time to do that before we touched down and we didn't want to go around so we bent the rules and let him sit on the bulkhead between the passenger cabin and the cockpit. After seeing what I thought for sure was a ghost, I probably made one of the best landings I have ever made.

And that's the truth

 Bowinkle T. Propwash

UFO Encouters of the Poof Kind

Anybody that's done much hangar flying knows that pilots can be divided into three groups. Group 1 thinks that UFO's are solely the product of too much time spent at the airport bar. Group 2 has probably broken a dozen FAR's chasing or trying to get away from UFO's. The third group are the pilots that were in Group 1 and then had an experience that made them switch to Group 2. This group is a lot like ex-smokers or sober alcoholics and clean druggies. They want to tell anybody and everybody about the thing that made them believe.

I'm pretty solid Group 1 but several years back I almost became a convert to Group 2. I still like to recount my "almost" conversion experience so I am a little like the third group. This happened before deregulation and if you had the route; you flew the route. Didn't make any difference whether or not any passengers had bought tickets. You probably had mail and small freight and the airplane had to get to the next place anyway to keep the schedule working.  I had bummed a ride from Roanoke to Lexington on an EAL 727. Another non-revenue pax had beat me to the jump seat so I went back and stretched out in the seat across from the galley. There is a whole row missing in front of these seats on the right side of the aircraft. I am a pretty tall guy so I like the extra room to stretch my legs. When the door was closed for pushback, there were only 5 passengers on the airplane besides me. Two suits up in first class had their own flask and made it obvious they didn't want any stewardess attention. Back in Y class with me was a lady with two children that she must have drugged for the flight. NO kids their age are that well behaved. All three of them were sound asleep about 30 seconds after gear up. I was just getting ready to snooze off myself when the three stewardae came back with some cards and asked me to be a fourth for bridge. I'm not used to bridge playing stewardae; and certainly not three on one flight. I was delighted and thankful for my good fortune and soon we had a good game going - even though the one that was my partner still didn't play 5 card majors.

So what about UFO's? Be patient, good stories can't be hurried. We climbed out to FL290 and they made a PA to that effect. We were flying between two well defined layers which is a bit unusual for that altitude; but you see all kinds of weather over the Appalachian's. One of the stewardesses seemed to be spending a lot of time looking out the window. When she made an illegal call, her partner asked her what she was watching and to please pay attention to the game. She fessed up that she was seeing a funny light that seemed to be following us. We all abandoned the game for a moment and began staring out the windows. Sure enough, at about our 4 o'clock position, there was a white circular object that seemed to be following us. It had a quivering, slightly erratic movement  but maintained a constant distance from us. I estimated it to be about a mile from us.

Now I had flown quite a few hours and I had witnessed many aircraft being places where they weren't supposed to be. Of course this is usually at much lower lower altitudes where you have airline, corporate, military and private aircraft all sharing the same airspace. You don't expect to see grandpa in his J3 cub at FL290 in the middle of the night between cloud layers. But I must admit that this thing was making me doubt my commitment to be a Group 1 pilot. We watched it for at least 10 minutes and I became more and more convinced that something else was between layers with us and it wasn't any type of aircraft that I had ever seen before. I was thinking that maybe it was some secret military spy plane or something like that.

While I was trying to convince myself that I was just seeing an optical illusion, my bridge partner went over to the gallery and called up front on the interphone. The cockpit crew must have been Group 2 because they had already spotted it and and notified ATC that they were going to make some minor deviations from the jetway they were tracking to "double check" some autopilot functions. This was serious business because they could be in trouble for the extra fuel burn if it got back to management and they couldn't lie ..er I mean explain their way out of it. Soon I felt the aircraft in a shallow bank to the left. The UFO stayed right with us in the same relative position to our aircraft. A minute later they made a steeper bank turn back to the right and the UFO stayed right with us. I realized that I was already thinking subconsciously of it as a UFO. For the next several minutes, they put the aircraft through some pretty drastic maneuvers for a revenue flight. The UFO stuck to us like a shadow.

Maybe it was the shadow metaphor that made me think of it. Maybe it was the thinning of the upper cloud layer and the fact that the object's motion was becoming more erratic. It suddenly hit me like a bolt of lightning. I almost shouted to my bridge partner that was still standing next to the interphone. Ask them to kill the nav lights. As soon as they turned off the nav lights, the UFO disappeared. When they turned them back on, the UFO reappeared!

Now I still don't understand all the physics involved. There was some perfect set of conditions with the two cloud layers and the white tail navigation lights that was creating an optical illusion that fooled several reasonable people. When we landed, I wanted to talk to the cockpit crew and see if they had a negative conversion from Group 2 back to Group 1. I didn't get to do that because my bridge partner stewardess made me a better offer.

And that's the truth

Bowinkle T. Propwash

Defective Whiskey Compass

This story and variations has been told around airport loafing areas on rainy Sunday afternoons for at least fifty years. Now I'll tell you the real story because I knew the real people involved and was there the day it happened. I won't use real names even though both Tom and Kurt are dead now. It was going to be a cross-country dual flight flight from Greater Cincinnati (CVG) to Lexington (LEX) and return. The year was 1958 and there wasn't any Interstate 75 to use as a "navigation aid". When Tom, the student, and Kurt, the instructor, finished the preflight inspection of the Cessna 120; Tom informed Kurt that he really didn't need a $4 per hour instructor to find an airport that was less than 100 miles away. Kurt readily agreed but pointed out that FAA rules were FAA rules and he wasn't going to sign Tom off for cross-country solo until he was good and ready. This exchange was just semi-friendly but Tom knew he had to play by Kurt and the FAA's rules.

They took off and headed South towards Lexington. Of course I wasn't in the airplane but I heard the story the way Kurt told it and the way Tom told it. The points of view were different but the important facts pretty much the same. The story probably would have never been told except that another pilot on air taxi trip from Cincinnati to Frankfort saw the whole thing from the air and ratted them out.

The flight seemed normal and Kurt never said a word. Tom was doing a good job keeping the airplane on exactly the whiskey compass heading he calculated before take-off.  (The 120 didn't have a DG) The visibility was at least 25 miles and soon Tom announced he had the airport in sight. He called the control tower and was cleared to entered the traffic pattern. Lexington had very little traffic in 1958 and there was no Terminal Area Radar or transponder squawk codes. Tom entered the airport traffic pattern and reported to the control tower that he was downwind for the active runway. The control tower replied that they could not see him and asked for him to rock his wings. Tom rocked his wings but Kurt took over the microphone and informed the Lexington control tower that they had drifted off course to the west and would be making a landing at Frankfort airport. Frankfort airport did not have a control tower and Tom made a normal landing and taxied up to the ramp without saying a word.

I'm sure Kurt made some remark about how easy it was to find an airport less than 100 miles from home.  Frankfort airport is only about 25 miles west of Lexington airport and many pilots have confused the two. Not too many years ago, a Delta crew actually landed a DC-9 full of passengers at Frankfort thinking they were landing at Lexington. I can imagine the stewardess telling the passengers to keep their seat belt fastened until they were parked at the gate and then finding out that the gate was 25 miles away at a different airport.

I'm sure the flight from Frankfort back to Cincinnati was very humbling for Tom. Neither he or Kurt said a word as they came into the flight office to complete the post flight paperwork. Kurt asked me to go retrieve his jacket from the airplane. He had folded it carefully and put it on top on the instrument panel when they took off for Lexington. I noticed the jacket was real heavy and jokingly asked Kurt if he had rocks in the pockets. Kurt reached into the pocket and pulled out a large U-shaped magnet. "I've been told these things could really mess up the whiskey compass if they got too close to them."

And that's the truth!

Bowinkle T. Propwash

Airline Food Alternative

Hey before you all start telling me about your horror stories with the food the airlines give you. let me tell you about a better way. Just taxi on over to Cuzin Charlies blog and get a flight plan for some good grub you can fix at home and sneak on the airplane in you carryon luguage. Make an extra heaping in case you have to bribe one of those TSA folks.

Welcome Aboard

I'm not going to tell you a bunch of things about me cause they ain't very interesting. I am the quintesential airport bum and hanger flyer and for sixty years I have been gathering up all kinds of lies ..er I mean stories from all sorts or pilots, mechanics and even stewardae. I'll be posting a bunch of those. It will sure make this a more fun site if you join and post your stories also.

Bowinkle T. Propwash