[DeTomaso] Bag tag breakdown....

[MikeLDrew at aol.com]

Hi guys,

So, I was supposed to go to Korea and order bag tags last week.   Problem 
is, I was supposed to get there in a C-5, and it got Drewsastered.

We departed Monday, destined for Hawaii for a fuel stop only, then Guam.   
When we got to Hawaii, they made us stop because a typhoon was flattening 
Guam and the crosswinds were too high for a landing on any runway there.

So, off to the hotel we went.   Tuesday morning we showed up back at the 
plane, destined for Guam, but then I checked the weather, and guess what?   
The typhoon hadn't moved anywhere and we still couldn't go!   So I negotiated 
to skip Guam entirely and instead go directly to Korea.   That took hours of 
coordination, and we finally got permission to do that.   

Then, the plane broke--an electrical fault with a bus tie contactor.   So, 
they screwed around and fixed it, we started engines a second time, and this 
time one of the engine generators was out of whack.   We had already lost 
one of the generators and were flying around on only three, but the potential 
to lose a second one was too great to risk a 10-hour overwater flight.   
All they had to do was open the cowling (like 'pop the hood') and add some oil 
to it and it would be good to go.   Problem is, there is a 25-knot wind 
limit on the cowlings, and the winds were blowing at 28 knots.

So, another bag drag and back to the hotel.   We had been out at the 
airplane for 10 hours by this point and hadn't moved an inch.

Wednesday morning, we checked out again and showed up at the airplane.   
The generator was fixed and we were good to go.

Oh, wait.   Seems that it was a bit hot on the airplane while they were 
doing their maintenance, and the maintenance troops had opened up an emergency 
escape hatch to get a breeze going.   That heavy door is suspended from an o
verhead track by a big wishbone-shaped aluminum cast piece.   Somehow these 
boneheads managed to snap one of the legs of this wishbone!   They got the 
door closed, looked around, nobody saw them, so they didn't say anything and 
left the scene!

Now we showed up, and discovered that the emergency escape hatch couldn't 
be opened!   Bad news in the event of an emergency, no?

So, offload the bags again and another bus back to the hotel.   No such 
parts exist in Hawaii, so we had to wait another day while they flew a 
replacement in from California.   By now, we were scheduled to be flying home, and 
we hadn't even gone anywhere!   So, they decided to download our cargo in 
Hawaii and let somebody else take in on, and we loaded a full load of 
California-bound cargo, and just flew home (uneventfully) on Friday.

So, there's a week of my life wasted!   And no opportunity to go to Korea 
and order bag tags.   I still have the order form filled out and will do it 
the next time I head out that way.   It may be a couple of months or more 
though....

Mike