A Dead Passenger on Arrival !

Manning the radio transmitter on the company frequency was sometimes fun.

Sometimes it gets unusual requests.

Once, a Royal Jordanian flight over flying Oman airspace had a medical situation and requested a doctor to come on the frequency.

The airport doctor was called in and, after a lengthy conversation, the PIC decided to divert the aircraft to Muscat, and later, the child, who had some issues, was rushed to the nearest hospital.

A couple of times, I had to chip in by providing the latest cricket scores to the Sri Lanka Air crew while overflying Oman territory.

The British Caledonian crew used to call in on approach to give their bar uplift order to the catering unit.

That was one of the most challenging conversations.

One, they speak with a hefty accent, and the second was that most of the names of the spirits they ordered were not so familiar with the guys who are only used to Old Monk kinds of Indian stuff.

There was a KLM flight at the same time, and their Station Manager, Mr Patrick Hennessy, used to help our Operations guys get the order right whenever he was around.

But I think the best call came in from a British Airways flight.

It was during shift changing time that an alert was raised that the flight was landing with a dead passenger.

All necessary emergency protocols were initiated accordingly, and when the aircraft was met with so many vehicles with emergency lights flashing, even the crew were taken back a little.

The CSD asked what the emergency was, and when he was told that we were ready to receive the dead passenger, he could not hold his composure anymore.

"No, we don't have a dead passenger, but we do have a deaf passenger" who will require assistance with formalities, which is why we called ahead on the radio.

The situation was scaled down immediately, and it was the one occasion that a debriefing was not held after a reported incident.

Later, it was revealed that the message was taken in the absence of flight operations personnel by someone who was supposed to be manning the flight information and announcements desk, seated side by side with the operations control.