Boeing 727

I love the three-holer. The first airliner I ever got to fly in as a kid (PHX-IAD non-stop in 1981). Still my favorite jet.
 
Cool sight, thanks. Did you fly any props, ie Connie, DC4,6 etc?
 
Too bad most of the picture links are broke.
 
mscard88 said:
72 is transport, or did you mean passenger airlines 727?
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You asked about pistons (DC4/6, etc) and I replied. I have flown a lot of piston type aircraft (GA type) but not transport (DC4/6, etc)

All of my transport type experience is in Turbo Prop and Jet.
 
Works for me. Good read, thanks.

Did you prefer the short or long body?
 
Great airplanes. I was a plumber on them but never got to fly them.
 
Loved the 72. Great project.

Always thought pulling on the control cables from outside was a novel way to run the steering so we could reconnect the steering linkage after pushback after we took her off the tug.

And of course we always had to put the rear air stair down after flipping the anti-DB Cooper device immediately on arrival at the gate so she didn't fall on her ass during loading.

If I had to unload or load a narrow body I'd find a 72 flight if I could. Normal sized humans could work in those baggage compartments.

Absolute worst was the Mad Dog. I probably still have screwed up vertebrae from tossing bags in those hell holes.
 
GlennAB1 said:
Every 727 I worked on, the DB Cooper lock was spring loaded and actuated by aerodynamic load. Never had to touch it on the ground.
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They'd get stuck as I recall. They were a little bent and beat up by the time I was working 72s on the ramp. We'd pull a belt loader back there and stand on it to reach up to flip it.

Especially on one particular airplane that came in from Seattle every night 1/4 full of frozen fish. I liked the work space in the holds but that flight every night was always a smelly nasty mess.

We'd really feel bad for folks when the Seattle crew was in a hurry and tossed bags in so haphazardly that they ran out of room and had to stack bags on top and around the stinky boxes of fish that had an outer layer of icy slime that got all over the bags. Our supervisors would usually "write up" the Seattle crew for that in the computer, whatever that meant.

I heard we got some sort of write up once for slamming bags in so fast to turn a 737 that they were all a piled mess in there. We had six guys throwing stuff as fast as the belt loaders would run and we'd gone and grabbed the two with broken governors so the belts were flying.

Didn't change my paycheck so I didn't care.

The one that would really tick you off was the bags not having a net over them (common, the net hold downs were always tangled and broken) and falling down on top of the door on the 737. Man those were a ***** to get open covered in bags that were jammed behind them. It'd take everything you had pushing with your legs from the belt loader to get the door and bags to move. I think we only ever had to call the mechanics once on that problem. A bag jammed the door just right and somehow got caught up attached to the door mechanism. Never saw the outcome but it took them a couple of hours to get that door open.
 
GlennAB1 said:
Every 727 I worked on, the DB Cooper lock was spring loaded and actuated by aerodynamic load. Never had to touch it on the ground.
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Me too...

denverpilot said:
They'd get stuck as I recall. They were a little bent and beat up by the time I was working 72s on the ramp. We'd pull a belt loader back there and stand on it to reach up to flip it.
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And you guys would never think to tell anybody about that? Like a pilot or maintenance? I'm surprised that this made it past the preflight. I know it was a long time ago, and it's all water under the bridge, and it really doesn't matter at this point, but if I was doing a walkaround and the DB Cooper lock was stuck (it was required to check that it swung freely and snapped back into place), I'd call maintenance and the plane would be grounded until it was fixed. The aft airstairs were an emergency exit, and it would suck to have people trying to evacuate using the aft airstairs, but they couldn't lower the ramp because no one ever told maintenance that the DB Cooper lock was stuck.
 
I'm wondering if the airplane Nate is talking about happened to be N220NE operated by Emery and Charter America...

For those not familiar, that airplane was the infamous TWA 727 that rolled inverted in Michigan. It was still flying long after the incident, but let's just say the airframe was never the same. Kind of tweaked....I could see the DB Cooper latch being stuck on that one.
 
Fearless Tower said:
I'm wondering if the airplane Nate is talking about happened to be N220NE operated by Emery and Charter America...

For those not familiar, that airplane was the infamous TWA 727 that rolled inverted in Michigan. It was still flying long after the incident, but let's just say the airframe was never the same. Kind of tweaked....I could see the DB Cooper latch being stuck on that one.
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The laches had a good spring on them and I never saw one that hung. As others said, that's an emergency exit and if anyone ever saw one not working it would be fixed before the next flight.

Remember these planes would get a maintenance preflight, the engineer would do a preflight and after landing maintenance would do a walk around.

Something like that would get noticed.
 
Sluggo63 said:
Me too...

And you guys would never think to tell anybody about that? Like a pilot or maintenance? I'm surprised that this made it past the preflight. I know it was a long time ago, and it's all water under the bridge, and it really doesn't matter at this point, but if I was doing a walkaround and the DB Cooper lock was stuck (it was required to check that it swung freely and snapped back into place), I'd call maintenance and the plane would be grounded until it was fixed. The aft airstairs were an emergency exit, and it would suck to have people trying to evacuate using the aft airstairs, but they couldn't lower the ramp because no one ever told maintenance that the DB Cooper lock was stuck.
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Dunno. I don't remember doing it more than a few times. Someone eventually saw it, I suppose. I was a dumb kid that probably got my first pilot's license about a month or two before that. If I even had it by then.

Trying to remember which year it was. Three years or so all blurred together with two to three jobs and school classes. I suspect I typically got about four hours of contiguous sleep per day back then, plus a cat nap here and there. Actually a cancelled flight was a god-send back then. It meant a 20 minute cat nap somewhere quiet like one of the warming rooms under the terminal building near the gates, and the radio turned up in case any other gate needed anything. My gate lead knew where I was and knew I was working too much.

Good old guy. Manny was his nickname as I recall. He worked baggage for the free flying. He was always wheeling and dealing away shifts so he could go fishing in Florida on all sorts of days of the week.

It was the lead guy on the gate who first said, "get up there and flip that" and it fell into "whatever that dude says" back then and routine until that particular airplane no longer did it. I never heard why, but it makes sense that someone would have finally noticed it.

Fearless Tower said:
I'm wondering if the airplane Nate is talking about happened to be N220NE operated by Emery and Charter America...



For those not familiar, that airplane was the infamous TWA 727 that rolled inverted in Michigan. It was still flying long after the incident, but let's just say the airframe was never the same. Kind of tweaked....I could see the DB Cooper latch being stuck on that one.
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Doubt it. Aircraft was at a Continental gate in Continental livery with Continental passengers. ;) Emery usually went to the cargo ramp and CO didn't have any contracts to do anything for them. I think CO had some maintenance contracts with Evergreen but not Emory.

RotorAndWing said:
The laches had a good spring on them and I never saw one that hung. As others said, that's an emergency exit and if anyone ever saw one not working it would be fixed before the next flight.



Remember these planes would get a maintenance preflight, the engineer would do a preflight and after landing maintenance would do a walk around.



Something like that would get noticed.
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Us lowly bag guys were always back there first and MX would never have seen it, nor the pilots, since we'd flip it and then put the stairs down so we could get to work. The stairs down was a requirement (and chocks) before we could do anything else. Couldn't even drive the belt loaders up to the doors since if the thing for some reason got butt heavy, they didn't want additional damage from it smashing a belt loader on the way down. Or so the training video said.

Hell, I think I can count the number of times MX came to an aircraft on a little more than both hands worth of fingers, or if I use my toes. We only saw MX if we called the supervisor on the radio for some problem we had (he'd tell Ops, our radios didn't have the Ops channel programmed, only the red jackets had that, and they'd get MX rolling over) or if there was someone answering in the cockpit on the ground phones, they'd call Ops and get MX rolling. Most cockpits were empty or nobody was answering as soon as we chocked and gave them ground power. We could walk up the stairs and see if they were in the jetway, but it was just easier to radio a sup. They always wanted to come over and look official when MX arrived anyway. Ha.

About the only other time we saw MX was if the crew had called in a mechanical in flight and MX showed up to tow the airplane away after we'd emptied out the bags. Ops would let us know it wasn't going to turn and we'd get a new gate assignment for the next outbound, and the airplane would sit on the gate until MX came and got it, or they'd tell us it'd be leaving with MX immediately because they needed the gate, and they'd taxi another airplane onto our gate than we usually handled, and we'd have a quick turn with half the usual time to do everything.

If we were lucky the sup would remember to send over the original gate crew, but the night guys rarely did that. Whatever was on your gate was yours to deal with and the red jackets wandered from problem to problem.

CO at the time had a maintenance facility in DEN (Stapleton) so it was rare to see anything but quick MX items that could be cleared and the aircraft released, done at the gate. They tended to hold the aircraft in DEN and tug it to the maintenance barn, instead of it getting trapped at a non-MX location if anything was wrong with them.

We'd get AOG parts once in a while for something in from SFO or Houston when DEN didn't have the part, and one of us would always offload that part first and throw it on the hood of a tug and drive it over to the maintenance barn to a desk where they'd check them in. If it was huge, we'd get multiple people to lift it into a baggage cart. We'd hurry it over and get a signature and hustle back because working a gate with two guys (narrow body standard night staffing was three per gate unless someone was out sick) sucks.

The stretch Mad Dog with three bins REALLY sucked, but I've mentioned that before. With two guys it was a PITA. So you hurried back. Always crap to do messing with three bins. Two unloading and the someone had to go move a belt loader (we only had two at each gate) to get ready for the third bin and get the door open and all that rot.

It didn't "flow" as well as two bin aircraft did with three guys. Or gals. We had a few gals back then. A couple of them could probably bench press the one skinny white haired ramp supervisor. Haha.

All sorts of memories guys. Thanks. It was only 24-25 years ago or so! Damn doesn't seem like it's been that long...

I did a bit of seasonal stuff over at the USPS ramp. Those guys didn't let any grass grow under their 727. That thing was busy and it was the old noisy type. If they throttled up at all you'd put your hands over your already good mouse ears and push on them to seal them up tight and walk away if you could. But most of the time over there being seasonal, I was just dumb muscle. Lift orange and green nylon bags and move them into carts to go into the sorting facility.

Tossing bags and mail was fun when the weather was good. Kept me out of trouble and out of the bars, that's for sure.

Hated it when they'd decide to deice someone at our gate. Makes a hell of a mess to work in the rest of the shift and usually the weather already sucked on those nights. You'd just keep moving so you didn't freeze in your winter jumpsuit and try not to get too wet. Bad weather in winter was just a grind.
 
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