Your worst experience flying? Service wise?

[invertedattitude]

Mine has to be a night when me and a buddy took some friends down to YHZ in a couple of 172's

We flew down, beautiful night, and head down to the casino for a few hours, we come back around 1AM or 3 hours later, to find frost on the aircraft, didn't expect it to develop so quick.

So anyway, we call all the ramp companies, no-one has de-icing fluid, we're at the Shell, they don't De-ice, the Esso, no not them either, so we've got no way to de-ice the airplane, except the massive Shell hanger in YHZ.

Well now we're talking to the only guy working that night, and he tells us it will cost us our $25 parking fee for each airplane (Totally fine, and expected) but if we want to use the hanger, he wanted to charge us $125 +Tax EACH to push the planes in the hanger for 30 minutes.

He said a hanger fee is because the door has to open, but he couldnt get his head around having to open it only once, and we told him to sit tight and we would push the airplanes in for him. He wouldn't budge and charged us both $125 +tax, he pushed one airplane in, and then said waited for us to push the other one in, to which I replied with a slightly sarcastic remark about I'm paying you're pushing.

So anyway, after sitting in hanger for 23.5 minutes (Yes I timed it) we dried the wings off, and away we went.

Now before someone says wait until morning, well the TAF was calling for a 600 foot ceiling starting around 7AM so we weren't in the mood for waiting on weather and end up getting stuck there.

Maybe I'm being unreasonable but still.

-------------------

Now on the flipside, we did the same trip a month or so later, parking at the Esso of course this time, and believe it or not I lost my landing light on approach, and upon returning to the field later, the other aircraft's landing light wouldn't work. So trying to be legal we decided one of us could go solo in one airplane, and we were just light enough to fit the other plus 3 pax in one airplane so long as we could get this light fixed.

So I took a stroll to talk to some PAL MTNC guys, who without even batting an eye said "Sure thing by'! Taxi her over here we'll fix that up"

Amazed they had a light to fit the plane, they fixed it, and didn't charge us any labour and sent the bill for the light to the flight school.

Wish I got their names, saved our bacon that night, well to keep us legal anyway.

[stef]

So you know for next time, you could have borrowed a corn broom and swept it off. Frost comes off easily most of the time.

[KISS_MY_TCAS]

Wow, you got taken. The guy at the shell cut you a good deal, $125 to open the door, the company takes a loss on thier natural gas bill for heat recovery on the place to push 2 fart carts in and back out. Buy a broom, frost comes off easy but what most pilot's dont get is that a short period of time in a warm hangar will not heat the wings internally or the fuel in them, so any moisture in the air will hit and freeze instantly. I get a big grin on my face any time a pilot asks for hangar heat in the winter to get rid of frost, pay up while I am pushing it indoors and explaining to you how ridiculous it is to move it indoors for a short period of time. The other real kicker is all that frost that turns to water and can wick into tight spots like flight control bearings and trim hinges and re-freeze causing much bigger problems once airborne. If you sweep the frost, this is no longer a concern because it never had the chance to melt and refreeze. Perhaps you are misguided on who the fool was that evening. FBOs everywhere love profiting on foolishness, hopefully you learned something.

As far as changing a landing light, kudos to the guys that did it, but it is an elementary task. Don't think for a second that the bill sent to the flight school did not contain a mark-up that more than compensated the 5 minutes it took to change the thing. Only difference in that case is the bill was sent to the flight school and not paid by you, otherwise you would also spout off about how ridiculously expensive that landing light was, when the CARs allow for you to change it yourself without even having to enter it in the aircraft's logs.

[niss]

Landing lights are pretty simple to change....only about 10 minutes for my 140. As for the frost, why didnt you just brush or scrape it off?

[N2]

...

[invertedattitude]

Guess it was my inexperience at the time, and regarding the moisture re-freezing, as I said we dried the wings as it melted.

Points taken for next time however... one hanger charge wasn't the complaint, it's charging us twice for opening the door once.

Business is business I guess, next time I'll just have to brush it off!