Golf Hotel Whiskey: for pilots and aviation enthusiasts
A Pan Am 727 flight, waiting for start clearance in Munich , overheard the following:
Lufthansa (in German): “Ground, what is our start clearance time?”
Ground (in English): “If you want an answer you must speak in English.”
Lufthansa (in English): “I am a German, flying a German airplane, in Germany . Why must I speak English?”
Unknown voice from another plane (in a beautiful British accent): “Because you lost the bloody war!”
If you push the stick forward, the houses get bigger. If you pull the stick back, they get smaller. That is, unless you keep pulling the stick all the way back, then they get bigger again…
"I just whip out my blue card with a hole in it and read what it says: ‘When color of card matches color of sky, FLY!’"
— Gordon Baxter
ANSWER: If a pilot screws up, the pilot dies. If ATC screws up…. the pilot still dies….
In the past, we have written about emus, rabbits and wild pigs running across runways but Reuters has recently reported that turtles crossing the runway at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York have delayed flights.
Apparently, the turtles were crossing the runway in order to lay their eggs on the sandy shores of the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge bordering the airport. Moreover, it wasn’t just one turtle crossing the runway but a whole herd (?) of 150 diamondback terrapin turtles that were spotted on JFK’s Runway 4L.
Fortunately for passengers, the initial flight delays caused by the turtles were minor and amounted to roughly 15 minutes. However, the turtles kept coming and hence, aircraft were directed to use other runways.
Hat tip to Sylvia, the blogger behind the Fear of Landing blog, who recently mentioned a bizarre incident in Turkey where a man started to give random vectors to pilots flying into Istanbul. ATC (consisting of two female controllers) valiantly tried to sort out the mess by giving advice that any wife of a male pilot would love to hear: “Do not listen to any man!” and “Please only listen to women!”