A couple of our boys were on the return leg of an offshore crew change. Fifteen minutes out from the deck, they catch movement in the back - one of the passengers has unbuckled his harness and is getting up out of his seat. Big 'no' on a helicopter. But before they can do or say anything, the guy grabs an airsick bag, drops his dacks, positions the bag under his bum and lets rip.
The bag lasted maybe three seconds.
'Explosive' does not do this bout of diarrhea justice. Volcanic might not. If I hadn't seen the photos, I wouldn't have believed it. It coated the floor, his seat, the seats beside it and the poor sods in them, splashed the windows and ceiling and row of seats behind. Shit. Everywhere. And the smell.
The real kicker is that, even though they're only fifteen minutes from the rig, they couldn't go back. If they did, the chopper would be stuck on the deck until it could be decontaminated by a cleaning crew. There's only one deck, so we'd have to send a second helicopter out to winch down said cleaning crew, a dangerous and expensive operation. Meanwhile, everyone due to come off swing in the next few days would be stuck on the rig until we did, while there wouldn't be enough beds in the town for the incoming crews. And the nature of the rig is such that it can't fully operate while there is a chopper on deck; literally millions of dollars in lost production. One dude with a rumbly tummy he didn't tell the rig medic about because he was just that keen to get home, and several hundred people are, potentially, right up shit creek.
So, they take one for the team and push on. Tell the culprit to sit back down and put his harness back on and pray for a tailwind. Two hours flying back to base. It's Australia, tropical and summer, and commercial helicopters don't have great aircon. The smell gets worse, and worse, and it's not helped when some of the guys have to use the sickbags for their intended purpose. By the end of the flight, the pilots are all but flying with their heads out of the cockpit windows just to breath, and have given serious consideration to landing as soon as they were over the mainland. Or any land.
When they finally got in, it was approaching swamps of dagobah level stank. Never had a disembark that fast, and you'd better believe the pilots did shutdown in record. There was a queue for hoses.
When the engineers started to do a damage assessment, it was even worse. That shit was runny, and grainy, and found its way into every crack and crevice and bolt-hole. The seats nearest to the guy were literally soaked in shit and puke and it was in the life vests and cabin raft. There was even splash in the cockpit. Everywhere. We had to fly in a specialist cleaning crew - the kind that normally does crime scenes - and fully strip and dismantle the cabin down to bare fuselage. In the end, the guy's seat and the seat of the guy to his right were so saturated, so caked and stained and soaked with his shit that we had to write them off. Tens of thousands for replacement, plus more in maintenance and lost flying time.
The guy in that second seat? Sat there, coated head to toe in his seatmate's shit the entire flight without moving or saying a single word.
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