Life and Airport Update

Like I mentioned on Twitter, mom is doing better.  Mom's wound closed surprisingly well. They're doing some tests as a precaution, but overall she's doing well. I guess I'm not so bad at first aid after all.

It's been a while since I've told you airport stories, so here's one. Not that many weird things happen at the private flights area. It's a lot less crowded and less rushed. Last night was busy though. When you look at the empty ramp it seems so big, put a couple of Gulfstream IVs in there and you realize it's tiny.

One was staying and the other, unrelated to the first, was just getting fuel, until a passenger started having cardiac problems. I got them the airport paramedics, who determined he had to be hospitalized. Though most of us picture an old man when we think of cardiac problems, the passenger turned patient looked to be in his twenties.

The ground handler/marshal, the new boy, was all nerves the whole time, I can handle chaos pretty well, so I told him to chill out. This was after he said he was picking me up to assist on ground and then drove past me, realized what he did and turned around. Even a ports authority agent showed up to watch the drama unfold.

I'm pretty sure I was the calmest person there. Cold as it sounds, the difference between a crisis and an adventure is if you and your loved ones are affected or not. It is this very sense of distance that makes me a more effective assistance, moving things along, communicating and going through the protocols properly and quickly, and there are a lot of protocols at the airport.

The marshal ended up going to the hospital with the family to help them as an interpreter, since their first language was Portuguese and they spoke little English. This station is often used as a midpoint to refuel in routes between the northern states of the USA and South America. Though we're not really fluent in Portuguese, we're all required to be English/Spanish bilinguals and we get so many Portuguese speakers stopping for fuel we're used to figuring out what they're saying based on its similarities to Spanish.

Since this was a private jet with only one family on board, it wasn't going anywhere. That meant it needed to be moved to a proper parking spot, since the marshal left it in front of the feeder ramp thinking it was leaving soon anyway. The crew was planning to spend the night on the plane so there needed to be personnel at the FBO. I called the overnight on-call guy and handed him my post when he arrived.

I went home, showered, then went to bed right away since it was late. I'm off today, playing videogames and relaxing.