Naahhh.. bitta mettal bashin an a few nayles, bee as guud as nue in no tyme.
Call Maysie on 1-800-cheapo and arsk for Dave (if he's awake).

Nothing involving commercial aircraft is cheap.

Problem when it comes to damage on the ground by ground crew is humans are never 100% perfect and they will always find a reason to blame whoever it was that did it.

Moreso with ground handling companies than airlines, airlines provide better training, lower turn over, more experienced employees so tend to have less issues when compared to ground handling contractors with high turn over.

Would you think it would make better business sense to give ground crews better training and better pay and conditions? Retaining a competent and happy workforce is a lot cheaper than getting new people in all time who mightn't know what they're doing.

When a commercial airplane has a fender bender on the tarmac it makes the national news. That indicates (to me) that it is an extremely rare occurrence. Some damage will of course cost more to repair.

That tape must be good stuff!!

Sometime between 3 and 4 o'clock I woke to the sound of hovering helicopters. After a long time they moved off, then returned, hovered again, then moved off. I remembered that some of the wealthier growers were using choppers to dry off cherries (@$1500/hr!) to keep them from splitting, but that was a long time ago. My sister cleared it up for me: They're training helicopter pilots at the little Oliver Airport (which is very close) and it's apparently one of the few/best places they can do night flying. They're still going at it.
Edit: I lied. I just went for a walk around and there are no helicopters. Where they tore out the apple orchard next door and planted a vineyard (very modern automated irrigation system), there is now an immense wind turbine thing. This (I guess) gets turned on in the wee hours when dew would be forming, and keeps the grapes dry until they're ready to harvest. On the opposite side of the trailer court is another (older) vineyard with another turbine sitting in the middle. The sound rises and falls, making it sound like helicopters leaving and returning. Normally in summer, there would be helicopter traffic, but there are no fires now.
I wouldn't be surprised to see helicopter training going on as well, now that I've heard about it. I can hear bangers for scaring birds away from going off in the area as well, so it's like a war movie soundtrack.
It just stopped - so 4 hrs of noise to look forward to each morning. This is a sacrifice I will gladly endure, because this is where wine comes from.

What a noisy day in the house today.

We're having the bathtub removed and a proper shower stall replacing it.

Back when airlines had their own staff it was a lot better, low turn over, better pay and working conditions and benefits, was the norm for the workforce to stay a career, it was a career, but like many blue collar jobs today, society and companies devalued blue collar lower skill work and airlines during the early 2000's went on a outsourcing trend.

Ground handling companies come and go like the wind, and its simply a low profit margin business, airlines choose the lowest bidder, the bidder bids too low to properly staff, pay and train, and a few years later, airline changes to a new ground handling company, everyone gets laid off, has to apply at new company, and start over, rinse and repeat.

In Canada Air Canada still has their own ramp employees in the major airports, their pay isn't great $13.85/hr (min wage here in BC) and raises pretty minimal each year but they do offer flight benefits which is an attraction ground handling companies can't offer much of, but I think Air Canada is having issues staffing based on their ads all over the place, their pay is set by the union contract, unions in the private sector have little power in Canada, being union doesn't mean a good wage anymore like many think.

Ramp isn't a high skill job, can be taught, but experience does matter, take away the experience and it becomes a gong show. Experience simply isn't valued by society, blue collar jobs are devalued.

Pay was in general higher in the 90's when compared to today, pretty sad really considering cost of living is substantially higher today.

Just the way life works these days, have to be pretty skilled, smart, educated, leaves those of us who are not able to achieve high level of skills further and further behind. Quite sad when people have incomes lower today vs their parents in the 90's yet costs keep rising.

Only the bigger events that are noticeable to passengers tend to make the news, ground damage happens more often then you realize and never makes the news but is fairly minor and fixed quickly or flight cancels for maintenance, 2 planes hitting each other makes the news, but most damage is from ground equipment making contact with the aircraft that passengers and media never know about.

That tape though awesome stuff, saves many a flight from being cancelled, lav access panel not shutting, tape it up. The paperwork in the log book takes longer than some of the repairs do, was always a running joke with maintenance, 10 minutes to fix, 20 minutes to do the paperwork.

SoS - usual balance between skills & competence required & pay necessary appropriate to retain those assests - in this case actually quite low, compared to other sectors.

Snoring?

I was dozing about 7:30 am on Wednesday morning when there was a loud "clatter, clatter, clatter" in the bedroom.

I looked around very bleary-eyed, and finally managed to work out that the fan that was still on one of the chests of drawers had broken ............. the ring that holds the safety thingy in front of the fan had broken.

The safety thing was lying on the floor, and the broken ring was draped rather nicely around the fan!

OH thinks he can repair it before next summer .............. I say "buy a new one"

I was awake at 3 expecting the noise but it never happened, and just recently heard a faint sound of rain on the roof. Checked and it is indeed softly raining. They don't pay to use the turbines when they won't do any good.