Not many people get to park their car here – bang in the middle of Heathrow airport, on the taxiway just a stretch of grass away from where a line of passenger planes is coming in to land. It’s close enough to see the shimmering air and smoke as nose tyres hit the tarmac. He knows – part of his job is to ensure the runway team scrapes it off and patches things up overnight.
And it is all recycled, he adds. The airfield operations officer is not in the limelight much, but is one of a host of unsung workers keeping transport moving. And some jobs far from the public eye turn out to be not only essential, but surprisingly challenging.
Passengers might only catch a glimpse of Quantick-Thorne from a window seat on landing, if he grabs the paddles to marshal a plane into the exact designated spot at the stand. But human marshalling remains a crucial backup. Brandishing the paddles, Quantick-Thorne beckons in a taxiing British Airways arrival, the pilot peering down from the cockpit and steering 50 tonnes of plane straight towards him.
The nosewheel travels bang on the guideline, stopping exactly in position for the airbridge to swing in and allow passengers to disembark. When you’ve got a really big plane, an A380, you need a second marshal right by the wheel to check it’s stopped in the right place,” he says. Back in the car, the job continues: “I’m patrolling, I’m looking around, scanning everything – is the refueller doing his job properly, has the aircraft got chocks under its wheels?” That includes monitoring the road system under Heathrow’s airfields, recognising every vehicle and checking any infringement: drivers here can also clock up points on their licence, if he spots them.
Officers also need to look out for wildlife – particularly birds, a serious danger for jet planes (and vice versa). How does he deal with them? These, marvellously, turn out to be speakers on the roof of the van, which play a range of bird sounds: “If I saw a flock of starlings, if I played a starling noise, the starling would think, ‘Oh, maybe there’s a predator nearby,’ and they fly off.” And, he demonstrates, “I’ve got common gull.
If there’s a pigeon over there, best play a falcon so it will fly off.” If he now knows birds, it’s the planes that drew him here. He was previously at Nats, the air traffic control centre in Swanwick, managing the planes, but never up close. There is more to it than the paddles – but, he confesses, he takes every opportunity to use them, and records each plane that he has marshalled, including every aircraft in BA’s short-haul fleet.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
