On a large transport aircraft base in Wiltshire :rolleyes: the MT vehicle mileage was severely capped during the fuel crisis. On my squadron, engineering staff were instructed to walk to their designated aircraft on dispersal, carrying the necessary tools and equipment with them, rather than use a vehicle – not necessarily a bad thing, you might be thinking. However, some of the remote stands were a round trip of about one hour from the flight office; the tools and equipment also required a greater number of personnel than previously for their carriage as there were insufficient hand carts available – together, this often slowed the job down somewhat! Anyway, this in itself was not a major problem as local flying was severely restricted during the fuel crisis, thus reducing the number of serviceable frames required for tasking. By default, some of the ground engineers clocked up more flying time than aircrew during this period (not many ‘flying spanners’ v lots of aircrew).
During the power strikes/outages, the dispersal stadium lighting was turned off at midnight, unless an urgent operational requirement dictated otherwise. Apart from a severe lack of illumination for engineering tasks that took place during the hours of darkness, this resulted in several incidents; the most serious being a ‘road traffic’ accident in which a ground engineer was knocked down and injured outside the line squadron hangar by a patrolling RAFP in his Minivan. Apparently the plod failed to see the engineer due to the lack of lighting, stadium lights ‘off’ and Mini headlamps on! – the outcome resulted in ground crews being instructed to wear reflective cross-belts over their working kit during the hours of darkness!
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