Work Experience with Northwest Airlines @ LGW

I grew up in the West Sussex town of Horsham, which for those unaware of England's geography, is a historic market town just south of the 'new town' of Crawley and its adjacent international airport London Gatwick. I spent much of my childhood watching aircraft on the viewing area or alongside the runway. I went to an all boys Secondary school (that's for ages 11-16 - like US High School I think) and a progamme they ran was a two week work experience break. Somehow I lucked out and spent 2 weeks with the engineering department of Northwest Airlines!

This was back in May 1994. I was a nerdy kid and fortunately nobody else had the vaguest interest in airliners so there was no competition from school mates for the role. At that time Northwest Airlines had their European engineering base at Gatwick, which received two daily flights (from Detroit and Minneapolis) using 747s and DC-10s. Northwest also did the maintenance for the American Airlines flights which at the time I think constituted only a less than daily 767-300, possibly from Raleigh-Durham (I can't quite recall).

The team also dealt with any issues with Northwest's Amsterdam services but unfortunately none came up in the time I was there. It was a great fortnight as I got to work closely with the guys on duty doing such activities as walk arounds, pushbacks, changing the engine oil and checking out the cockpit alarms. I have to admit at the time that I didn't really appreciate it as much as I ought to have. I kick myself now but I remember even getting a bit bored of doing the same things everyday and I admit to also being rather distracted by the copious amounts of hardcore porn that the guys had acquired from trips to the Netherlands! You've got to remember that this was way before the internet and I was 15!

Obviously this was also well before digital photography too so I only got to take a handful of photos at the time. These are what make up the photo content of this blog entry. I wish I had had a digital camera and put more effort in but what can I say, it was a great time nonetheless and introduced me to the female form in a way I hadn't known before, as well as letting me get up close and personal with some fine widebody jets :).