09 November 2006

HNL RareBirds

Can anyone help out on these two "incidents?" According to an airport employee, Aloha Airlines had a 737 with two smoking engines on the reef runway the other day, and it was closed down for two hours. This caused a bit of an inconvenience to the other operators who had to detour or alter taxi patterns.

Today, Thursday November 9, there was an Air Force (AFRC to be specific) C-5 Galaxy parked(?) about 100 yards Ewa of the turn on the taxiway at the end of Lagoon Drive. From about 4:30 to 6:30 pm, I watched as some neat flatbed lift-trucks unloaded about 6 to 8 large palleted loads, three truckloads full. Then, two tanker trucks labelled JP-8 (typical military jet fuel) either filled or off-loaded the big bird. Next, a crew bus from Hickam took 8 or 10 pax/crew back to the base. Never in my 26 years of hanging out there did I ever observe such an activity, especially in the middle of a taxiway! Neither did the FedEx guy that hung out with me for a while. Does anyone know what was going on? Was there an abort, then was the plane lightened so that it could make its way back to the Hickam tarmac? Was this some "special" procedure? I'd be really interested in finding out. Sorry, no pix, no camera and the sun was really backlighting the whole scene anyway.

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