by Jon Frost
The second reason for the Customs officers gathering outside was the amusement provided by the plane itself. This was still at a time when Stansted Airport was operating from the old terminal and, as such, the passengers had to walk down the stairs that had been physically wheeled out on to the tarmac (nothing motorized here!), and then they had to walk to the terminal. It was hilariously low-tech. But not as low-tech as the Bulgarian plane.
So it was for the final act of passenger disembarkation that we all gathered to watch. The aircraft was so decrepit and aged that, as passengers disembarked, the plane’s hydraulics would start to expand, making the plane rise higher and higher in violent jumps. By the time the plane had jacked itself up to a good three or four feet, it meant that there was a reciprocal three- or four-foot drop from the aircraft to the top of the stairs. And just who was left on the aircraft that had to try to jump this gap to safety? Our patience was paid off every single time. The crew always left the injured and broken-boned skiers to disembark last: in other words, the people least prepared for the jump – those with legs and arms in casts and with white-bandaged heads.
Now, to state that the Bulgarian Airlines hostesses were helpful would be an outright lie. Most of them seemed either to have served in the KGB as torturers or were former athletes still lunching on steroids. They really did seriously see their passengers in the way that other cabin staff only jokingly refer to them, as SLF – self-loading freight. Their method of offloading the last passengers was done with a heavy helping hand: the cabin crew either pushed them out of the door or escorted them to the exit, like walking the condemned to the gallows, and just dropped them down directly on to the stairs! It was a magnificent sight to behold and always drew a healthy and appreciative crowd of airport staff.
The moral of the story: don’t go skiing in Bulgaria, and, if you do, make sure when you are back in England that you get off the plane first.
It wasn’t only semi-bankrupt former communist countries that ran big birds made from bent tin through the skies. Switch Air International was an American-owned cheap airline, or what they call ‘bucket shop’. In this case, that was an insult to the quality of most buckets. Switch Air had one plane, a DC8 Super that had seen better days and the better days it had seen were already millions of miles in the past. Its regular once-a-week flight went between London and Florida and cost just over £100 for a return ticket. Which was about ninety-nine quid too much. It was bloody dire on board and the plane had a frightening history of breaking down. The airline was economical in the extreme. On its first arrival with us, I was on a shift doing plane walk-ons, so I boarded the flight along with our dog-handler Mickey and his mutt Arthur to give the plane and the crew a once-over and to make sure they knew that UK Customs meant business at this airport.
The first thing to hit us was the smell of human waste. It smelled like a Turkish prison lavvy at the height of summer during a violent outbreak of diarrhoea. We quickly learned that it was because all the toilets were overflowing with excrement and urine. In order to save money, the airline had not paid to have its bilges pumped in the States. So between me, the dog and the dog-handler, it was a close-run thing to see who got off the plane first. Because its sense of smell was far more sensitive, the dog won by a nose.
A couple of weeks later, the same aircraft – which we had now christened Turd Airways – came into land in its usual way, descending like a homesick brick. On landing, it somehow managed to blow two of its tyres. It wasn’t a simple task to inflate them again because aircraft tyres are filled with nitrogen so that they don’t burn and explode with the heat of landing. Now, for some reason, the mad captain (we decided he must be mad to fly this old shed) decided to call for a full emergency evacuation, which was completely unnecessary. We couldn’t work out why he’d done it, and decided that he probably just wanted a laugh at the passengers’ expense.
So sirens went off everywhere screaming blue murder, and police and fire engines roared out of their sheds with everything flashing – including the crew, still pulling on their pants – and they all sped towards the plane in the expectation of actually getting to use their kit (there’s nothing more eager than a bored fireman jump-started by a fire bell).
I happened to be patrolling around at the time in our little boarding car, so when this screaming motorcade of bells and blue lights on red alert sped past I thought that I would mosey on over and take a look. The doors of the DC8 were wide open and I was just in time to see the emergency slides deployed – these are the large plastic inflatable ramps used to slide passengers down to the supposed safety of the runway. I was surprised that this airline even had slides that worked, although, knowing this outfit, they were probably connected to the toilets.
I saw that standing in the doorway was a very heroic-looking passenger, ready to take the lead and be the first to take the escape route to safety. Now, there’s a right way and a wrong way to use aeroplane emergency slides – you have to lower yourself to the lip and slide down slowly – but you would probably only know this if you’d been told by the plane’s crew. Surprise, surprise, this passenger evidently hadn’t been told anything, so he took a massive leap into mid-air and hit the inflated slide right in the middle. All the emergency crews standing by looked at each other, and then quickly looked back, knowing what was coming next. The slide bowed down a good fifteen feet, stretching almost to the tarmac, and then, like a bungee rope at full stretch, it twanged! – and shot the poor guy out of the slide with such speed that he rose in the sky like a homesick angel and then landed a good fifty yards away on the bare tarmac. We all winced at the sound of the wet smack. He was immediately carted off to hospital with two shattered ankles, making this cheap bucket-airline flight of his an awful lot more costly.
Afterwards, I wondered what it would have looked like if someone had taken a photograph of the scene at that precise moment: an aeroplane with two flat tyres surrounded by emergency vehicles, flashing lights, policemen, firemen, airport staff and Customs officers (one in a buggy) . . . and every single face looking up to the right, into the sky, as if watching a bird. But there is no bird. There is instead a middle-aged man with a wide-open mouth (and no shoes), wondering how he managed to get to an altitude currently higher than that of the plane he flew in on.
But you never have a camera around when you need one, do you?
As Stansted Airport dragged itself into the twenty-first century there were many things that had to be repaired or replaced to enable it to call itself a modern airport. First, of course, came the new terminal. An amazing piece of modern engineering designed by Sir (now Lord) Norman Foster, who must have been playing with straws or pipe cleaners when he came up with the design. Next on the list was the runway. Although it wasn’t the longest in the UK, it had the accolade of being the first UK runway to have a space shuttle land on it in 1983 (albeit a shuttle having a piggy back on a 747 jumbo jet). All runways have to be relaid at some time and the process is quite spectacular, and they are always relaid at night so that the airport can be shut down. The old runway has to be lifted so the new one can be laid and the teams usually manage about thirty feet a night. It doesn’t sound very much, but then the runway, believe it or not, is about four foot deep, and it has to be dry and ready for planes by 8 a.m. the next morning. It’s one thing for you to leave a cheeky shoeprint in some wet pavement concrete, but a fully laden passenger jet ploughing down into soft tarmac would not be good publicity.
One of the biggest tasks at Stansted was the rebuilding of the fuel farm. The old one was never going to be adequate for the new airport and long-haul aircraft. The whole farm had to be rebuilt with new piping and storage facilities. The stored aviation fuel was kept in what used to be called ‘gasometers’ and these huge tanks would provide enough internal pressure so that there was little further pumping needed. The rebuild took months and the final stage was to test the whole operation prior to filling the system with Avgas (aviation gasoline). We had received prior notic
e that on the due date the water was to be turned off for the whole terminal building. This was due to the fact that the gasometers were to be filled with water to check for leaks and to measure pressure through the pipes to the aircraft stands. Pretty simple, you’d think.
The day arrived and most of us turned up at work with bottled water; others would just wait till lunchtime and then fill up with beer. Everything was going tickety-boo. The tanks were filled and the pipes were ready to take the flow. Then Bang! Boom! Boom! Gush! The stopcocks gave up the ghost and exploded, one so violently that it embedded itself in a brick wall. The domestic pipes then took the full pressure, blowing taps off sink basins. Metal junction covers shot into the air and then the whole airport flooded with some pretty disgusting water as the drainage system collapsed. You could say the shit hit the fan . . . and the walls, and the floor, and the ceiling, and just about everything else. The ultimate dirty bomb.
It could not have been more of a hugely successful disaster if it had been planned by some evil Marvel super-villain called Doktor Turdfest – we had a brand spanking new £100 million airport covered in crap. Good job Prince Charles wasn’t doing one of his typical hardhat-wearing site visits; I mean, that wouldn’t have been at all funny, would it – the future King of England dripping from head to foot in shit? Course it wouldn’t. Not funny at all.
It took a further two weeks to dry the airport out and eliminate the smell of human waste, as well as to fix all the domestic piping, screw all the taps back on and hook the toilet seats down from the light fittings.
But whoever came up with the idea to test the pipes first with water rather than aviation gas deserved a pint or two because otherwise there would have just been a great big smoking hole where the airport and its workers used to be.
One of the things about working with large numbers of the general public is that every so often you encounter one who confirms the crudest comic stereotypes of their nation. And so it was on the day when the passengers disembarked from an Irish flight but they didn’t disembark into the old tatty Stansted Airport of before but into the totally brand spanking new airport terminal on the other side of the runway . . . which is why myself and the other officers on duty were astounded to overhear, in all seriousness, a passenger say, ‘Jesus, you would hardly recognize the old place . . .’
5. Monkeys, Rats, Jockeys and Other Animals
Each United Kingdom airport has a rating as to what creatures can be landed there: during my time in Customs, Heathrow and Gatwick had full tickets and could take anything; Stansted could accept livestock, pet birds and Chelsea supporters (and I should know, I am one). As we had no quarantine facilities, we could not accept dogs, so we became known for our horse and cattle flights.
It’s not really widely known among the public but every single day horses fly in and out of the country. How do these animals even get a pilot’s licence? I hear you ask. Well, actually they’re being transported – no, not to the French as burger meat – but mostly as the incredibly expensive, highly strung and unpredictable freight we call racehorses. They’re moved all over the world from meet to meet and they travel so often that, believe it or not, they even have their own passports. (I know, again I hear you ask, how on earth do they get them in a passport booth for the photo? Damned if I know, but the buggers are never smiling . . .)
It has even been known for unscrupulous owners to try to move a horse from country to country on a forged horse passport. Which is a bit like people smuggling but with two people involved and one playing the backside. During these horse flights, we would cover the outbound flights to check the passports – ‘Have you always worn your hair that long, sir?’ – and to ensure that the correct humane killer was being carried. This was an absolute necessity unless you didn’t mind the thought of a very strong half-ton of stupid, smelly animal going berserk on an airplane at 30,000 feet. The slightest thing can spook them, let alone the sound and rumble of jet engines. Personally, I’d prefer the lone horse threat to a plane load of drunk Brits coming back from Benidorm, but each to his own flying hell.
It was during these outbound horse-flight checks that I witnessed the unpredictable, brutal side of horses. An eight-year-old chestnut mare had just been loaded on to a Flying Tigers Airways flight to Hong Kong and, as if she knew she was in for a long haul, she was starting to get unhappy. I was starting to get unhappy. Everyone was starting to get unhappy. Luckily for us, the chap who had just sold the horse was still around for us to ask if he could try to calm her down. He’d known the horse from the day she was born, apparently, and they had a very close bond. So, at the request of the aircraft’s captain, her former owner and best friend boarded the flight. He certainly looked like he knew what he was doing: he ruffled her mane, stroked her nose, talked softly to her and soon seemed to have her calmed down. He carried on stroking her nose. Then she twisted her head and, taking his right hand in her mouth, she bit down with her chisel teeth and took three of his fingers clean off at the knuckle.
Well, I did say it was lucky for us that he was there, not that it was lucky for him.
Being so close to the Newmarket racecourse, our airport also catered for the super-rich owners who flew in and out. A few times a year, billionaire oil-rich sheiks would descend in their private luxury Gulfstream jets and we, the lowly uniformed Customs officers (the unclean ones), would board to do a search of the plane. It wasn’t so much that we seriously thought these were legitimate targets for drug smuggling – we didn’t – but more that we were just a bit nosy. We wanted to see how the other half lived, so we could then report back to the other other half and say, ‘Blimey, it’s even better than we thought! Actually, they don’t eat kebab-topped pizza like us!’
The bathrooms alone on these jets were small, gaudy palaces in themselves. Never before has so much gold and marble and onyx been employed in the simple task of a man wiping his arse. Or his manservant doing it for him. And there is a strange pleasure to be gained from having hot water running out of a solid gold tap. I guess it’s from getting something so ordinary from something so extraordinary. You’d more likely expect it to dispense chilled champagne. Or perhaps Irn Bru. But somehow the water seemed to take on a magical quality. Tap on/tap off . . . smile. Tap on/tap off . . . bigger smile. Yes, little things like this kept us simple people very happy.
I was once on one of these super-luxurious planes of the super-rich when the owner and his entourage arrived back from Newmarket. The sheik invited me to sit down for coffee. He was fascinated by the job of Customs and we sat talking for a good hour. Finally, he leaned forward and, with his hand out, offered me a job as a sky marshal (an armed bodyguard on an aircraft). I was really shocked by the offer of this prestigious and literally high-flying job, so what could I say but . . . no. I hadn’t been with Customs for long and I felt like I owed the department greater service. Fool!
The other unpredictable, sometimes nasty things we came across other than the horses were the little devils that rode them – the jockeys. Now, Patrick, our own little Irish short-arse Customs officer, had a pathological hatred of jockeys. Especially those from nearby Newmarket. We never did find out why. But, if it was because of anything like the encounter we were to have with a famous jockey, then it was perfectly understandable. Now, I’ve got nothing against a dwarf who dresses like a jester and spends his working life bouncing up and down on horses, really I haven’t (unlike Patrick – and why was that?). But if the guy behaves like an evil little twerp then all bets are off and, even though I’m a six-footer, don’t throw a ladder against me and send a jockey up it to tell me to pick on someone my own size. Some of these guys punch way above their height.
The worst by far was a famous jockey named Leonard (the name has been changed to protect my life savings). He really was – and was well known for being – a total shit. Or, to give him his full title, as we called him, the World’s Shortest, Biggest Bastard. He had his own driver and a very large Mercedes limo that one day we found parked
up in our staff-only car park. We approached the driver. He was a really nice bloke and he explained that, if he parked in the expensive short-stay car park, his boss, the millionaire Leonard, made him pay all the charges. In fact, he had to pay all the parking charges at all the race grounds and airports, and Mr Little Big Jockey would never recompense him. Over a couple of crafty fags, he told us more.
He said that his boss, Leonard, made it a rule that any hitch-hiker had to be picked up. Not bad, I thought, maybe I’d misjudged him. But, the driver went on, the hitch-hiker was made to sit in the front, was not spoken to by Leonard and, after driving for a while, the driver would be instructed to head for the next petrol station. The Merc would be filled up and the hitch-hiker then told to pay for the fuel or face the wrath, threats and tantrums of the world-famous jockey – not to mention being kicked out of the car. The driver hated himself for putting up with all this crap and for needing the job, but not as much as we now hated Leonard. More stories followed of his appallingly aggressive behaviour to others. He really was a nasty piece of work. The fact that he was an un-disputedly great jockey in no way excused him being a total arse. It just allowed him to get away with it. Well, we thought, not on our patch, shorty.
Two weeks later, on his way back from a meet in France, Leonard came through Customs. Oh, happy day! With exquisite coincidence, it was Patrick, our own softly spoken, jockey-hating, little Irish bloodhound, who had the pleasure of exacting the revenge. Pat immediately buried himself in Leonard’s suitcase, burrowing in like a mole and throwing clothes and underwear every which way. With his little legs practically kicking out of the case and his head muffled by clothing, we could just about hear Pat’s gentle Irish lilt saying, ‘No, no, nooo . . . can’t find it . . . nope. . . seems not to be here!’
Leonard, twitching with outrage and embarrassment, launched into a foul-mouthed tirade at Pat, but our Pat simply carried on with the search, more clothes flying out of the case as though it was being ransacked by a hungry badger. Leonard finally snapped, ‘Don’t you know who the fuck I am?! I’m Leonard Pinner!’