For Technicians

Check the tires, file down the prop blades, time the mags. Keep the airlines flying.

Remember The Forgotten Mechanic

Through the history of world aviation
Many names have come to the fore.
Great deeds of the past
In our memory will last
As they're joined by more and more.

When man first started his labor
In his quest to conquer the sky,
He was designer, mechanic and pilot
He built a machine that would fly.

But somehow that order got twisted,
and then in the public's eye
The only man that could be seen
Was the man who knew how to fly.

The pilot was everyone's hero;
He was brace, he was bold, he was grand
As he stood by his battered old biplane
with goggles and helmet in hand.
To be sure these pilots all earned it.
To fly you have to have guts.
And they blazed their
Names in the Hall of Fame
On wings with bailing wire struts

But for each of these flying heroes,
There were thousands of little renown,
and these were the men who worked on the planes
But kept their feet on the ground.

We all know the name of Lindbergh,
And we've read of his flight to fame.
But think, if you can,
of his maintenance man
Can you remember his name?

And think of all the pilots you've known and all the acclaim they have got
can you tell me the names of their ground crews? A thousand to one you cannot.

So when you see aircraft as they mark their way through the air,
Remember the grease-stained man with the wrench in his hand; he's the man who put them there.

----Anonymous


Keep'em flying

That's very nice poem. But look at this couple of sentences.

"and these were the men who worked on the planes
But kept their feet on the ground".

How do we keep our feet on the ground? I have flown in test runs with pilots, and flown to do maintenance to other stations, have flown as a nonrev to many places. I have more air time than alot of flight attendants. Yes, we do keep our feet on the ground as a general rule, but we go airborne too. Some of us have pilots license. (Not me.)