Holidaymakers avoided a long delay to their flight home when a passenger with an Irish army knife, a roll of duct tape and a claw hammer fixed a mechanical problem with their plane.
Passengers on the Thomas Cook flight TCX666 from Menorca were told to expect an eight-hour wait while an engineer was flown out from a Kwik-Fit service centre in the UK.
One passenger then identified himself as a ‘bloke who fucked around wiv car engines an’ other shit at weekends’ and offered to try to remedy the fault.
A spokeswoman for Thomas Cook said the company followed strict procedures to ensure the man wasn’t a complete and utter headbanger and had to fly home on the Boeing 757-200 aircraft himself after he’d bodged up and repaired the fault.
Holidaymaker Baz Scrunt, from Liverpool, was travelling home after a week’s binge drinking break with his 14-year old wife Chantelle when the plane’s captain announced the estimated delay.
“We woz in der plane like, ready fer effin’ take-off, when de effin’ pilot bloke sez der woz sum technical problem and dat an engineer might ‘ave ter be flown out from effin’ Manchester ter fix it.”
“Den dis stewardess slapper bitch tells us all like dat der woz dis bloke on board wot knew all about planes an’ shit an’ ‘e woz gonna ‘ave a go at fixin’ der problem wiv der engine like so we could take off an’ go ‘ome an’ not miss Big Brother on der telly.”
Frank McScallie, a Wythenshawe-based wheelbarrow mechanic, told a reporter from the Undertakers Gazette “It were like this – either sit there fer bleedin’ hours waitin’ fer the damn thing ter get repaired or git off me arse an’ do it meself.”
“I ‘ad a word with th’ pilot an’ ‘e said it were th’ right ‘and engine wot were kickin’ up an’ wouldn’t start. So we both goes down an’ ‘as a look an’ I gets me ‘ead in the turbine an’ starts firkling about an’ finds this bleedin’ big seagull all jammed up in th’ rotor blades so I digs it out wiv a knife an’ knocks the turbine blades straight wiv me ‘ammer, an’ duct taped th’ two broken blades back on.”
“An’ that were that matey, th’ engine started up no worries, wiv a big crack of black smoke an’ a shitload of scorched feathers came outa th’ exhaust, then we woz off – up an’ away an’ all that old shit. There’s no much difference from a plane engine ter th’ one on me lawn mower really, apart from th’ fact th’ plane’s a big bigger.”
Were you on flight TCX666 from Menorca? Did anyone scream hysterically and throw a panic attack when the plane eventually took off? Were you offered anti-anxiety medication by the in-flight stewardess? Were you offered any other forms of assurance or comfort? A parachute perhaps?
Tell us your experiences using the online form below and you could win a ‘crash’ course in aircraft maintenance at Thomas Cook’s Scrapheap Challenge flying school.