Picture courtesy of the wonderful http://www.failblog.org

I’ve heard some weird noises during flights on MD80s, 737 200s and the odd Fokker, all of which I am assured are “normal”. I’ve never witnessed blue ice, trailing smoke or flames, unexpected engine shutdowns, flap failures, or covers coming off in flight like our picture shows.

However I was on a Loganair flight from Glasgow once.

Once.

We had been pushed back and had taxied for about 50 yards when on go the brakes quite hard. Ah, this is first officer Sandy McNab or whatever his name was, we’ve got a slight technical problem that will delay us for a few minutes, we won’t need to return to the terminal etc etc. Almost immediately a Loganair van pulls up and another man pushing one of those sets of steps on wheels, you see them in B&Q, arrives and climbs up onto the wing. We’re all watching him. The guy in the van is handing him up tools. Off come some engine covers, and then more bits from inside the engine then he starts laying into something with a hammer!
Now, being in the trade as it were, I was unconcerned at the bits he took off. I was watching him, engine covers, some heat shields, but when he started in with the hammer, I couldn’t think what he might be hitting or why.
I looked at my fellow passengers but being British they were studiously ignoring everything by now even though you could feel the hammer blows through your seat. He suddenly stopped and put everything back and ran round to the pilot’s window and gave him the thumbs up. A second later though, he waved both his hands in the unofficial non JAR approved hand signal for “for fuck’s sake stop!”. He ran to the wing, and pulled away the steps, ran back and gave the pilot the DOUBLE thumbs up this time, so that was alright.
I felt like captain Kirk in that programme where the hairy beasts are crawling about the plane pulling bits off and he’s the only one to see them.

Think on that, on your way to Malaga this summer.