Under a midday moon

January 23

Paul V. (left) and Kyle (right —
Jody‘s husband, former NWA mechanic,
and now general manager of Pegasus,
which does maintenance for China Air and others)

In previous years,
this has been our view of the Chugach Mountains from NWA freighters.
Today, we view the Chugach range from China Air,
the airline of Taiwan, The Republic of China,
a free country which I’ve had the great priviledge of visiting twice,
many years ago.

Our now sparsely populated freight facility
is the building behind the loaders

And the building on the left
is filled with equipment we no longer use
.

This China Air 747-400F is parked at Delta’s (formerly NWA) F-2 gate, where we’ve worked numerous NWA freighters, once upon a time.

We’re still handling freight for Delta’s passenger planes, and at least for now we have a contract with China Air, which we park, dispatch and occasionally do a partial load on.

This was supposed to be a simple load. A 20-footer on, a few pallets bumped, a few moved…. But when we got onboard, we saw the two overhangs that opposed each other at about where I took this shot. And the aft center lock was fixed, immovable.

Paul, especially, quickly assessed the situation and cracked the code — and the plane left on time. It’s great to work with masters of the trade!

However, I often think of the many others who’ve also mastered their skills but no longer get a chance to use them — because of cargo’s last stand — last year.