Ground damage

[A64Pilot]

On 3/19/2022 at 3:58 PM, Austintatious said:

Ohh man, wild thread...

 

Reminds me of the time someone hit the trailing edge of the wingtip on my stepfathers Citation 501 with a golf cart.... that was about 100k to fix.  The guy that did it was puking in the parking lot after.

Good reminder to be very very careful with cars around aircraft.   I try to never point my truck at my plane and make sure to shut it off b4 I get out of it.   I need to be more diligent about warning other people that might drive in proximity to the plane about what not to do.

Twice I’ve seen vehicles driven into aircraft unmanned. First time was in Savannah Ga when our Martin Marietta tech rep got out of his golf cart and his laptop slid off of the seat and onto the go pedal, serious damage to an AH-64A, golf cart hit it going wide open

Then after Retirement I worked at the Army test activity, at the time a Contract job with Dyncorp. During in processing more than once we were all trained on vehicles on the flight line. Process was never leave an engine running, place vehicle in park, engage parking brake, turn off vehicle remove key and place in pocket, then open door and get out, we all signed documents saying we received the training even though most would not drive a vehicle, stickers with each step were in each vehicle, they were more serious about that than not walking into a tailrotor.

 

I wasn’t there 90 days when someone got out of a pickup truck, put it in park, but apparently not all the way into park, getting out with it still running, truck backed into an AH-64 hitting it with the corner of its open tailgate, did millions in damage, that aircraft went back to Boeing for repair , whole side opened up like a can opener did it.

Driver had to go pee and bleed for drug screening as it was a Class A accident, he was miffed as he wasn’t paid overtime, so he filed a grievance and got the pay.