We all know the incredible perversity of the universe which was translated in words by the Army Engineer Edward MURPHY (1918-1990) while he worked on Air Force Project MX981.
Second behind Albert EINSTEIN and Galileo GALILEI theories, Murphy’s law is verified million times a day across the world.
Nobody can and will EVER escape the harsh reality of this law.
( A loadmaster at work?)
The Hard world of Load mastering has also developed its own VERIFIED rules. These rules should be remembered when leaving on a mission, as knowing them may be of a great help to solve conflicts or issues would it be in the air or on the ground.
These are the basic 20 rules which may change your life, or at least bring a smile on your face…
1. If your mission schedule is very tight and you must return a charter airplane to scheduled services, there will be an incident or an accident delaying you and making impossible said timely return to scheduled services. If you are in no hurry and stress, your mission will go as smoothly as possible.
2. For any given time for a crew pick-up at hotel, at least one crew member will still be paying his bill when the limo should have already departed.
(Weight and balance conducted by a Czech load master during the "russian fleet" era...)
3. When splitting the bill in a restaurant there will always be an argument about who drank wine and who did not….except if there is a female crew member in the group, I which case everybody will be happy to pay for the wine with the hope of a return on investment when back in the hotel.
4. In a cargo DC-8 toilet, lack of toilet paper roll will be complemented by lack of paper towels but the discovery will come too late before finding out that there is no soap either.(This law is sometimes complemented also by the discovery that there is no water in the toilet system either)
5. Chicken crew meals will always taste like beef and beef will always taste like pork, regardless of the food supplier.
(Loadmasters shooting the shit in Australia)
6. When in a hotel, the more you will need to sleep, the closest your room will be from the elevators.
7. If you wear a glove on your right hand and open a turnbuckle or a cargo strap, your ungloved left hand will get bruised or cut before the day is over .
8. The spare flash light bulbs you carry will not operate when needed.
9. A good airplane with no log items left to sleep for a night, will wake up the next morning with at least one No-Go item discovered during pre-flight.
10. On a B 747-200, the PDU located under the heaviest pallet of you load will always be deflated or inoperative.
(Royal Air Force Loadmaster Insignia)
11. East of Rome, all doors closed and equipment removed, asking for clearance will always trigger the same answer by ATC advising that your flight plan cannot be found.
12. The more laundry you give to the hotel dry cleaning service, the more chances there are that your flight will be re-scheduled for an earlier departure, thus depriving you of possibilities to recover your laundry.
13. The closest you get to “Vr”, the more you will worry about the rightfulness of the CG indicated to the crew.
14. If you have an appointment with a lady in Billund, the airport will end up below minima and you will be rerouted to Copenhagen (but this can be also verified on other airports across the world)
(Military loadmaster....often applying also to "civilian" load mastering personnel)
15. The tool you forgot to bring with you will be the only tool that you needed to solve a complex problem and allow the airplane to be fully offloaded and on time.
16. At least one piece of crew luggage will not be correctly strapped or stored and will fly backwards towards the tail of the airplane on take-off.
17. When working on an expense report, the vertical column will check while the horizontal wont, and inversely.
18. While on a crew rest you will always drink more than you originally planned to.
19. On a fine sunny day in summer, detaching the DC8 Tail post will always work while on a wintery windy and rainy day, it will not.
20. If you swear to god, all around, that this is your last flight , that you had enough, and that your boss can go and “cook two eggs”, the company will call you within 48 Hours to ask you for another mission…and you will accept it .
© 2015 Sylvain Ubersfeld for Commercial Air Transport