Alltrikes

(if you've already read the intro jump down the page to ***)

Hostman started this great group with this Story:

         (I ported it over to the Group's Pages, so that everyone can continue their stories or responses in the

             comments below.  When we have lots of stories, we can divide into story Chapters)

the famous Ground Controller vs the German Airforce:

A few years ago my wife and I took a two month trip in our RV and one of our stops was at Glacier National Park. One day we took a tram up to Logan's Pass Visitor center located on the "road to the sun" road. I'm not sure but I think the elevation of the visitor center was about 7,000'. In back of the visitor center there is a walking path which leads up the mountain to a vista to view the beautiful surroundings. Due to the high altitude and the poor shape that I was physically in, we made many stops along the way. It was at one of these stops (about half way up) that I came across a man who was sitting on a rock trying to catch his breath. We soon started a conversation and I discovered he was an airline captain working for United Airlines based out of Washington Dulles.  Once he discovered that I was once an Air Traffic Controller at LAX, we couldn't stop talking about our aviation experiences.

I told him one of my ATC experience stories:  In 1972 the LAX airport was somewhat divided in half. There was runways 24L & 24R on the North side of the airport and runways 25L & 25R on the South side of the airport. There were major taxiways (47 & 49) running N & S between them. During the 70's a lot of new airplanes were developed which required runways of a different design to support their extra weight. Only runway 25L was able to support the "heavy" (250,000 lbs and more) jets.

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LAX tower was fairly easy place to work if everything went as planned. The only exception was the "ground control" position. It was ground control that had to route the planes into and out of the terminal gates. If your plane was parked in a gate at terminal 1 or 2 (North side of airport) and had an airborne departure route going to the West or North you could taxi them to runway 24L for takeoff. If the plane had an airborne route of South or East you had to taxi them to runway 25R on the other side of the airport via N/S taxiways 49 or 47. The same thing was true for planes in gates at terminals 4 through 8. So you could see the planes taxing to different runways based upon their direction of flight after airborne. It was the ground controllers job to mix the soup. Of course there was constant "arrivals" that had just landed and needed to taxi into their gates. To further complicate things, all "heavy jets" had to depart on runway 25L no matter where they were parked. Try to keep all this in mind....

Now the story: German Airforce (Boeing 707 heavy) asks for taxi clearance from terminal 1 (North of airport). I taxi him to runway 25 via taxiway 49 (N/S). Let me stop right now and tell you about PSA Airlines. PSA flights mainly run the shuttle route between LAX and SFO. They usually turn their planes around (land/depart) in about 30 minutes. PSA pilots are excellent in their piloting skills and quick wit. Since we work with them so much there is a lot of respect and banter between the two of us that helps cut the tension of the day. PSA flys the Boeing 727 and the plane's radio transmitter makes a certain sound that makes it easy to know who just transmitted. On with the story: The German Airforce 707 has now entered taxiway 49 and is heading Southbound towards runway 25R parallel taxiway. He is followed by other planes on that route and there are other planes Northbound on taxiway 47. The German starts to slow down. I call him and ask if he is having problems. He answers by saying "standby". He continues to slow down and I again ask what the problem is. His response is "that he has checked his passenger manifest and that they are missing a passenger". In just an instant there came a radio transmission saying "DID YOU CHECK THE OVENS"?  Silence....  Nobody said a thing on a normally very busy radio frequency.  More silence, everyone was in shock.  Then the German Airforce pilot demanded to know who said that?  More silence...  The German then said that if he didn't get an immediate apology, he was going to shut down his aircraft right there on the taxiway.  OH NO!  There were planes all over the place going different directions and to lose a N/S taxiway would be disastrous for me.

Well the German did shut down his aircraft and the city of LA towed him back to the terminal where he came from. It took me over an hour to straighten out the mess I had. PSA was never "officially" named for making the "check the ovens" comment, but we know they did. We never heard back what happened behind closed doors, but it nearly came to an international incident. No hard feelings towards PSA, they were just doing their job of lightening up the day.

Anyway, the United pilot got a funny look on his face as I told him my story. It seems that I'm famous, as he had heard the story before back East. He even took my picture to share with his other pilot friends about meeting the famous Ground Controller vs the German Airforce.