CARPENTERS

"On Monday 5 December 2011, a flight from Aruba by the company Tiara Air departing from Josefa Camejo International Airport was on the runway going at full speed to depart when a donkey appeared on the runway.

The aircraft, a Shorts 360, hit the donkey with the right main gear; the pilots kept climbing and continued the flight to Aruba for an emergency landing, which was performed safely with no injury on board."

( A Cattle ramp for "on land" operation. Ours was entirely dismantable, had four small wheels, and of course reached the door sill of a cargo DC8. It was stored in belly "A" and weighed approximately 2200 lbs)

(Inside of a cargo plane carrying livestock. The picture is very close to the reality. On the floor are sheets of absorbing material. Obviously, the cows are being loaded, en route for an " unknown destiny")

Why do I start this post with such a nice story ? Simply to let you imagine what kind of airport was PARAGUANA Josefa CAMEJO field in the mid 80's when I was flying the world as a charter representative for The Flying Tiger Line !

Josefa CAMEJO was an 18th century female revolutionary hero who played a part in the independance of Venezuela, where PARAGUANA is located.

In the mid 80,s PARAGUANA was a lost part of the world. I believe that things have changed now and the airport has slightly improved .

(Paraguana, a lost airport, one of my first experience with animals. Airport carpenters built a hand made cattle ramp. I had never seen this before...)

Wanting to improve the genetics of their livestock, local cattle breeder association had decided to buy new animals from Europe. Was it from Germany ? Holland ? I cannot recall and this is not relevant. We use to carry all kind of live animals from all part of the world to locations spreading anywhere and everywhere a plane could land. A full zoo from England to Doha, Corrida bulls from Spain to South America, racing horses from France to the East coast of the US...half of the time, the flights I kind of volunteered for were animal oriented...it was fun, it was often physically taxing, It smell of the farm, I simply loved it ..!

(Horse transport by air. Flying Tigers did a lot of these in cooperation with Instone Airlines. It was more "classy" than flying cows or pigs...)

We had flown from Europe using a DC 8 -63 Depending on the quantity of cattle to be carried, and the destination airport, Flying Tiger Line was using either DC8-63 or B 747-100 or 200 series

Building up a cattle pen system was a time consuming affair. First we had to place the 18 cargo pallets which would be the base of the pen system made of 11 separated compartments equipped with mobile doors. Then you had to lay the tar covered paper sold in big rolls, heavy and cumbersome to carry, then you needed to place the long plastic sheeting going from the first pen position all the way to the tail of the airplane.

Once this was done, we had to lay down sheets of absorbing material. It was then time to build the pen system made of so called " lightweight aluminium"....so light that by the end of the day, arms and shoulders would really hurt bad. ! The different components of the pen system would stay together using a system of straps, cables and hooks attached to the seat track around the cargo pallets. Once the straps were attached, the doors were kept opened and wood shavings spread generously on the entire pen surface...Then came the time for boarding the cattle ! Cows, or whatever had four legs including often pigs or sheep was kindly invited to board the airplane climbing in the cabin simply walking on a ramp designed for animals. Very often, airports have the kind of equipment required to load or offload cattle, and The Flying Tiger Line knew that in some location, no ramp was available. For that reason, we use to carry in the "A" belly of the airplane a "portable cattle ramp" made of aluminium, a 10 Pieces structure with wheels, which could be dismantled after use , loaded in the belly and put together at the arrival airport should the later not be equipped with a proper ramp....

(Pen system is set up, cannot say if it has been used or if it will be used. Our system looked just like that, eleven compartments spread over the 18 positions of the plane.)

When carrying cattle, or any kind of cargo, take off weight as well as landing weight is the essence, and we had been told by the destination airport that a proper ramp would be available in Paraguana to offload our animals...So guess what ? On that particular trip, we simply saved 2000 lbs and did NOT carry our foldable/mobile ramp and its 4 wheels......And when we landed in Paraguana, asking the ground staff in my hesitant spanish for equipment to offload the cattle, I was simply told that we were suppose to have our own on board. Miscommunication ? lack of information checking ? Who knew ....but we had to find a solution as the temperature of this early afternoon was rising and our 75 cows were generating more heat that what the airplane ventilation could get rid of...No ramp available, temperature rising, a longer ground time, people pissed-off at me in headquarters( Opscon),I was getting a bit stressed.....So my last option was to be creative...No ramp ? We simply need to build one !

(Connie Kalitta B 747 ready to load "palletized" cattle. Depending on the weight of the animals, one could fit between 4 and 6 cows in the wooden pens placed on and tied-down to cargo pallets ( usually 96" x 125")

At the airport bar, on a dirty table, using a napkin, I quickly drew the " blueprint" of what I wanted, and local airport carpenters were called to see if my project was feasible....It was....but they needed the wood, nails as the airport would only provide the hammers ! Each charter representative would carry with him reasonable or unreasonable quantity of cash in US Dollar banknotes. The amount depended on what was your destination. A mere 500 $ were enough to buy wood and nails, in this part of Venezuela where wood is plentiful ( nails however were a rare item in these days...) and the airport carpenters were dispatched to the town of Paraguana to fetch the equipment.

(Ladies and ladies, Captain XXX and his crew are happy to welcome you on board this super DC8 jet trader . We will reach our destination in eight and half ours. Please relax and enjoy your flight...")

When they returned about one and half hour later, the temperature in the airplane was alarming and the cows in the tail positions were already laying down which was a bad omen. The Paraguana airport carpenters called on all available colleagues, and pretty soon, a wooden "single use" ramp cattle was built and attached to the DC8 doorsill with four straps and the first cow walked off slowly as if nothing ever happened... It is only when we got closer to the tail area that I realized that five of my "passengers" would never taste the grass from Paraguana fields. Even dead, cows weigh a lot and getting them out of the airplane could be done only with a winch and a cable. Feeling bad as my mission was somehow a failure, I called the charter division to explain the situation . As the phone patch was going through and I could talk to the man on duty, I confirmed to him that we had lost five animals. After recapping the events leading to this unfortunate situation, the answer came :

"don't worry Frenchie, this happened to all of us...The airport people will have enough "carne asada" (*)for a couple of months!"

(*) Carne Asada : the latin America way to designate BBQ cooked meat.