I don't have any photographs of commercial planes, so I just grabbed a photo I like. A fellow Army Pathfinder took this photo of a jump I was on. I told him I'd be third out on the port side so the little dot underneath the port side of the plane is me. We were static line jumping a c-130, ADM, 1000 feet AGL and at about 110 or 120 knots over Antelope DZ at Ft. Hood, Tx. I especially like this photo because of a photo anomaly. Note the third person from the left. His chute is pushing and forming an arc of water molecules, dust, or something.
But, to the tale of our commercial airline misadventure:
My wife and I had a reservation for a flight from Ciudad Obregon, Sonora Mexico to Dallas DFW via Tucson (circa 1998).
We'd had this reservation for three months. On the date of departure we took a bus to Navajoa then to Obregon. At Obregon we took a taxi to the airport which is about four miles outside town. It is kinda in the middle of nowhere and before they can land or take off a plane someone gets in a pickup and drives the runway looking for livestock that may be of some concern.
We walked into the sleepy little airport and the only airline there was AeroMex. We couldn't find the airline we had reservations for, "S.W. Cropdusters, Inc." or something like that. We asked the people at the AeroMex and they told us the Airline had been shut down by the U.S. FAA. The time was 11:30 A.M. The clerk at AeroMex was very nice and said their next and last flight out, that day, was at 4 P.M. and that she'd get us on that one, but it was to Phoenix. Our reservations on Delta was from Tucson at around 3 P.M. We had no choice but to fly AeroMex to Phoenix - and there try to change our reservation, on Delta Airlines, to DFW, next flight out. The Mexican airline clerk took us to town and dropped us off at a pizza joint and picked us up an hour later and retured to the airport. We went out at 4 P.M. , courtesy of AeroMex and landed in Phoenix about an hour or two later.
To make a long story short, Delta changed the reservation to the first flight out the next morning, we rented a car, stayed in a motel, got up at 5 A.M, turned the car in, checked our luggage in, went to the gate, discovered that the flight had been canceled, told to re-schedule for later in the day, went to the next flight out gate and demanded to get on stand by, got on the plane and landed in DFW. Yea! But our luggage was on another plane so we filed lost luggage, caught a Super Shuttle home and about 3 A.M. that night our luggage was delivered to our house. Whew!
AeroMex never charged us for that flight to Phoenix. As far as the puddle hopping airline, we contacted our credit card company, and after about 3 months, we were credited for the full amount that had been deposited to make the reservations.
Everyone at AeroMex had been very nice and helpful to us. It only added to the many positive experiences I've had with the Mexican people.*
I am a lucky man.
*I suppose it is OK to make a footnote here: certainly there are exceptions, but they pale in number and mostly because I choose to avoid those people, places, and things.
posted by Compromise Till Death at 6:37 AM
9 Comments:
We didn't want to jump out of this C-130 so the Jumpmaster held up a sign that said;
"THIS IS AIR TRANS AIRLINES"
There was still a little reticence so someone yelled, "There's a MF snake!"
Actually the "little dot on underneath the plane on the port side is not me." It is an fleeting image, an image caught on film that was processed and printed to stop and record;
"a leaf as it was swept down the river"
"and at this date probably getting close to the sea."
The years just fly by. I'm afraid. I'm afraid that I will not get to do some of the things I want to do. I don't want regrets when my sun sets, but I can't figure out how to avoid it.
My enemy laughs and leers and licks his hideous lips, patient and sure that he will ultimately get his claws into my flesh and laughs hystericaqlly as he rips me to shreds and growls as he wipes my torn body all over his horrible face.
I dream that I can't see my sun set. It is lightning, thundering, dark from the violent clouds that scatter drenching rain in all directions and the beast rips his way through it all, ripping the clouds apart blending into the chaos, an apparition of hate and evil, --- then I pull the covers over my head and I am afraid, and think of another dream where I am being buried alive, hardly disturbing the morphology of this vast wasteland, another victim of the Eternal Thief.
Rodents sniff, , claw, dig and eat my body then scrabble home, squeeking barbaric enigmatic Ba Ba, Be Be and scurring in trepidation, fearful of the coming light, uncomfortable that they are covered with dirt, smell of rancid fat and putrid flesh, knowing that the raptors yawn and stretch their wings - the dirty rats!
I've studied this photo pretty much. As you know, there is a normal progression as the chute opens. eg. Numbers one, two, and four. No. three exited the starboard door, therefore was ahead of number four. His canopy should be opening and larger than number four. It appears that he may have a lot of twists in his static lines and either he "kicked them out" on the way down or pulled his reserve. As far as the arc I still can't figure out what it is.
Might be some P coming from the parachutist, rigger powder, ?.
Of the near one hundred jumps I made, there were probably twenty that were routine.
One jump I made with the 82nd, the Division made preparations for 5 deaths and 15 seriously injured. When I exited the C-130 we were still over the Atlantic.
Actually the sign said:
"This hear are air-Trains airlins"
loco gringo
Note: Why don't you tell the story I particularly like?
Which one Carolyn?
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