Fuel Truck Stages Standoff With Plane

Idiots on both ends of this situation...

Way to go line guy.....Twice in 1 week, i would ban the pilot and plane from ever coming to airport again. If you cant afford a $85.00 fee the sell the plane. Douche bag

Yeah, that pilot really is the D-Bag here...

HAHAHAHAHAHA

GIVE ME MY 85.00 DOLLA OR ELSE U NOT LEAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This guy is a total idiot, like leaman said I agree, twice in a week>WOW
Agreed Ban the guy from Airport Services

But the other side was not so smart either, but efective

In reading the rest of the story, the fuel truck was reported to be 200 ft in frount of the plane. Heck we all know that is farther away than they are when fueling the plane next to us.

Seems like there are more effective wats to deal with this. I mean, his N-number is painted in huge letters and numbers on both sides of his plane. How hard would it be to file a complaint with the FAA? Refuse fuel sales and service? It sounds like the airport has their FBO by the horns here too, seeing as how the FBO paid his landing fee. Perhaps this guy could even find a nice, hefty, "fuel surcharge" on his next fill-up?

Blocking his way with a kerosene bomb is a horrifically stupid idea.

KMRH is one heck of a beautiful airport. I stopped there once on the way back from ocracoke island to fuel up. Very nice people there too. I dunno what I think about this. 200 ft plus chocks..... Not that big of a deal. Also for this to make it to news..... Who dyou think called this tv station??? The pilot who wouldn't pay I bet..dbag

IDIOTS. They say there was not any safety hazzard.... BS. Those Little Chocks to hold a kingair under power. BS. A 172 could pull over that one, and from the Video, the the Truck was a lot closer than 200 feet.

pay the money D bag.......you can burn $85 in B200 in about 3 minutes.....

The concept is to park the fuel truck in front of the plane before the engines start. Have had to do it a few times. Works everytime. There are a few dead beats everywhere who are the first to complain about fuel prices, service, landing fees. Only way to handle them is to deny service and strand them. Only way they will learn.

The plane was chocked which tells me the pilot was in a hurry to leave. The pilot should have shut the olane down if he was afraid. It takes money to maintain an airport. Landing fees are revenue. I don't like landing fees but I can see why they are in place. The airport i'm based at doesn't have landing fees. Planes come in and use the courtesy cars, pilot lounge, and dont get gas. It takes money to provide services. Who pays for it when their isn't money coming in. The local pilots get screwed or the airport deteriorates from lack of funds to maintain. Sending a bill by looking up the tail number doesn't mean the bill will be paid. You just have the name and address of the owner. It doesn't mean he will send the money. If they don't want to pay landing fees don't go their. Don't complain if an airport doesn't have services or looks worn down either. They probably don't have the revenue to provide them.

@svennertime: +1

The employee was right in blocking these bas..rds, second time, same week to them and who knows how many times at other aiports. From now on every FBO on he East Coast knows that whenever King Air N762NB and/or pilot Chad McLeod come around it is HARD COLD CASH in advance or they would be looking down from the wrong end of double-barrel gauge 12 shotgun (LOL!)

By the comments I wonder if any of you are pilots yourselves other than salaried slaves for some presumably rich owner. FBO's blindside us with such an irregularity of fees, even after calling and talking to the beauty school dropout at the front desk and getting erroneous information as to what to expect. Eighty-five dollars is eighty-five dollars, and if it ain't so much then pull it out of your pockets and flush it down the toilet...and now, not after your next paycheck!

Im on both sides being former manager of an fbo and a commercially rated pilot. About the facility fee, as long as the fbo is providing service(parking, asking to clean window, carrying luggage, getting ice, papers, trash, etc) then a facility fee is in line. As a pilot, although im not the one footing the bill, it really bothers the heck out of me to pay for service i didnt get.
Now onto the issue, the truck. We often fueled medivac helicopters while running and as long as all precautions are taken the risk is minimal. The only thing that was at risk at kmrh was the pilots and the fbos reputation.

I will say $85 is a hefty landing fee but it is what it is. The pilot already "forgot" to pay at the beginning of the week. You would think he would "remember" that, contact his company and have them make arrangements to pay, or the pilot can pay and be reimbursed. If the company didn't pay, then the theft of services is a matter for the police. If the cops were there with lights flashing I am sure Pilot Chad would have shut em down.

Sky High Air, and pilot Chad McLeod, should be grounded until they get their act together. They already skipped out on payment earlier in the week, later attributing the "mistake" to forgetfulness. That excuse went right out the window when they tried to skip out on payment a second time, claiming their schedule was too tight to take a few minutes and make the required payment. The second attempt to skip out intentionally nullifies the "mistake" of the first time they actually skipped out, proving it to be another intentional act to defraud a service provider. It would also appear the pilot was in a bit of a hurry, forgetting to remove the nose gear chocks, which makes me think he had no intent to pay anything.

Now, add to that the fact that the passenger, Denard Harris, ended up footing the bill, and it's pretty clear Sky High Air did not have the money to pay in the first place, proving prior intent to defraud. One need not be a lawyer to put this one together.

The FAA needs to look into Sky High Air's records, to see what else they haven't been paying for (especially maintenance). If I were a passenger who just had to foot the FBO bill, I'd be a bit concerned about my personal safety.

Personally, I think the FBO should have blocked the aircraft upon landing (because of the previous incident), rather than when it is getting ready to depart. A vehicle other than a fuel rig should have been used (if possible), but I fail to see the real danger here.

This doesn't add up. Who starts an airplane but doesn't remove the chocks before taking the pilot's seat if they intend to taxi? Who did he think would remove the chocks if he didn't? Why should the truck operator think the plane was going to be leaving if the wheels were chocked? What pilot would put himself and his passengers in danger by taxiing into a fuel truck that was stationary on the ramp in front of him?? If the answer is that no one would, how is this a dangerous situation? And last, who would go to an airport with an $85.00 ramp fee? :-) This sounds more like someone creating a news story from a non-event to make a villain of the FBO and its employees, thereby harming them more from a PR standpoint than the $170.00 in fees owed. A vindictive commercial pilot. That's just great. I bet he couldn't pass the behavioral traits part of the commercial written anymore.

I will VOTE for anyone who will fight tsa abuses!

I cant tell you how many times I have been called to remove chocks on an airplane whose pilot failed to remove the chocks prior to engine start.
Fee nomenclature needs to be clarified.
A Landing Fee is generally assesed by the airport owner to be collected by the FBO who has a lease from the airport owner. This feel goes to the owner of the airport not the FBO
A Facilities, Ramp, Parking, etc. fee is charged by the FBO to help cover the cost of insuring your airplane while it is on the FBO's ramp, lease fees to the owner, the chocks you forgot to remove, and on and on and on. Some FBO's are better than others about providing minimum service. Washing windshields is not advised as most linemen are not trained or have the proper equipment to do it without scratching the windshield prompting a claim by the aircraft owner on the FBO for ruining his unobtanium clad bug protector.

Remember. The greatest danger involved with aviation is STARVATION.

I've seen plenty of commercial and especially shoe-string part 135 operators that's fight you over a $2.00 part on a $2 Million airplane. The pilot was dead wrong. As for parking a fuel truck in front of him- BIG DEAL!- it's done all the time. Safe as houses, unless some bonehed stick actuator tries to taxi into it! And that takes some doing!
Bottom line- take the time to know the fees at the airport before you land. If it's a charter, it part of the cost of business.

I find a lot of things about this story curious as well. Yes, the may have forgotten about the chocks in his hurry to leave (whether in a rush, or to "dine-and-dash"), but I wonder if perhaps he hadn't started the engines *after* the truck got there, trying to escalate the situation. We saw the driver get out in the video, but that's not proof he had just pulled up.

Second, if he's so strapped for cash, why was he so willing to sit there with engines running when he obviously wasn't going anywhere, right or wrong?

I'd love to see someone do some more reporting on this to get to the bottom of the story; but given that any followup is unlikely to have scary video, or generate hyper-dramatic headlines and pithy quotes, I doubt anyone will bother.

I think the phrase is, "What we got here, is failure...to communicate".

I agree with the fees. I disagree with what might be classified as criminal behavior (the fuel truck). Boo MRH. A facility to be avoided.

If I were the FBO owner and this A$$hole already burned me.... The least he would get is a fuel truck in his way... Followed by a glock in his mouth...

For those of you who are lambasting the employee who parked the fuel truck in front of this King Air, I would like to share with you something that I learned from very reliable sources: the pilot had phoned in before arriving asking for information regarding landing fees. When told that it is $ 85 he had said that he is not going to pay and had the temerity to land. If you work in a store and have the responsibility to look after it and somebody makes off after stealing a carton of cigarretes, a book or a mink coat, anything, you tell me what it is (it is spelled R O B B E R Y) you would do.

If you don't like the fee, then DON'T land there.

The pilot sounds like a bum. If you don't like the fees, don't park at the FBO!

If you can afford to fly a plane like that, you can afford $85 poxy dollars.