Chapter 98: A joke about all civil aviation
In 2000, AIDS was still a disease that people were terrified of. In fact, even after 20 years, medicine still has no cure for AIDS, but can only delay its onset.
Of course, compared to the 1990s when people could only wait to die, Xu Cang remembered that antiretroviral therapy, commonly known as cocktail therapy, should have appeared abroad in recent years. However, this cutting-edge treatment method has not been widely used in China, and even the corresponding anti-HIV drugs may not be available in China, which is still quite troublesome.
However, Xu Cang was not afraid at all. He knew that the transmission routes of HIV virus were quite limited, and air transmission was not one of them. He just said a few words to the third flight attendant, and there was no possibility of infection anyway.
Apart from lamenting that it was such a pity that flight attendant No. 3 had contracted such a terminal illness at such a young age, Xu Cang did not have any special feelings.
"Then number three is only in his twenties, how could he be infected with this stuff ?" Lu Jinghua also recovered from the initial shock of hearing the news, took out Li Rongcheng's business card and threw it to Xu Cang: "Are you sure you are not infected? Do you want to go for a check-up?"
"Can you have some scientific knowledge? AIDS can only be transmitted through blood, mother-to-child transmission and sexual intercourse. I just said a few words to her, how could she be infected?" Xu Cang took the business card, but did not put it in his pocket. Instead, he took a photo and returned the business card. He knew that Lu Jinghua treasured this business card very much, so he should not take it away from her.
"Besides, AIDS can usually only be detected after half a month. What can I find out if I go and check it now?" After finishing the work, Xu Cang stood up and said, "The penalty for being late should only be a fine of several hundred yuan, right? There won't be anything else, right?"
"There is nothing else." Lu Jinghua put away Li Rongcheng's business card and curled his lips: "Then let's go check it out in half a month. The company has a support policy for major diseases. For the situation of No. 3, the company will also help."
Xu Cang was about to leave, but when he heard this, he stopped and turned around to ask, "Is it okay for immediate relatives?"
Lu Jinghua was stunned: "What do you mean?"
Xu Cang suddenly thought of his mother: "I mean, if a direct relative has a serious illness, can he or she be helped?"
…
I can only say that I gained a lot from this visit to Lu Jinghua's office, at least I learned about the employee assistance policy. According to Lu Jinghua, direct relatives can indeed enjoy the corresponding policies, but the direct relatives stipulated by the company are narrower than the direct relatives consensus of the outside world. That is, in the regulations of Blue Sky Airlines, the direct relatives of employees only include parents, children and spouses, while grandparents or grandchildren are not within the scope.
When Lu Jinghua learned that Xu Cang wanted to apply for major disease assistance for his mother, he was more attentive than Xu Cang. This kind of thing is usually reported to the union within a period of time, and then the union will distribute the assistance money or materials, which usually takes a long time. Lu Jinghua said that he would personally supervise this matter and urged the fleet to keep an eye on it.
Although Xu Cang had no worries about his future financial problems, the problem was that he was really short of money now. Any big money he had would be given to the pharmaceutical company to research immunosuppressants, and the smaller amount would be given to his father so that he could use good medicine to prolong his mother's life. He would only have a few coins left, and he had to count them to make ends meet.
If he could get some help, Xu Cang would feel a little better. Moreover, Xu Cang was very concerned about the company's reward after the 9211 incident. To be honest, in this bureau investigation, he basically ignored the stupid things that Captain Tan Heling did and said without leaving any traces. He was looking forward to the company's reward!
However, after communicating with Lu Jinghua, Xu Cang realized that he would have to wait for the reward.
Xu Cang understood that whenever there was a fine, the company would act quickly and without any delay. But when it came to bonuses, they would not cheat, but would just delay as long as possible because of various links that required review and signature and funding, which made Xu Cang very upset.
As for verifying whether there was any problem with the cargo door of the 47 24 aircraft, Xu Cang felt that it was necessary to give it a try. Although it seemed a bit difficult, Xu Cang shamelessly threw all the questions to Lu Jinghua, asking Lu Jinghua to find a way to get a temporary pass to enter the airport control area.
After returning home, Xu Cang originally planned to call Li Rongcheng to arrange a meeting. But he thought that his words were not enough, so he should wait until he could verify it. He thought that Lu Jinghua, the general manager of the flight department, could be trusted to get two temporary passes, right?
If Lu Jinghua really can't get a temporary pass, we can discuss it later. After thinking about it, Xu Cang felt like an old woman who had to worry about everything. It was really hard work, but there was no reward.
…
The next morning, Xu Cang deliberately turned off the alarm on his cell phone. He didn't have work today, and he didn't plan to go to the company. He planned to stay in his residence and lie down for the day.
However, Xu Cang, who was still dreaming, was woken up by his cell phone. He fumbled for the phone with some difficulty and saw the caller number, which turned out to be the dispatcher's landline.
"Hmm?" Xu Cang really didn't expect the dispatcher to call him. He probably didn't have any flights or backups today. Rubbing his eyes, Xu Cang still answered the phone: "Hello, what's up?"
"Brother Cang, where are you now?" The dispatcher's slightly anxious voice came from the other end of the phone.
Xu Cang yawned: "Where else can I be? At home."
"Brother Cang, is it convenient for you to come to the company and fly to Tianning now?"
"Tian Ning? What a good squad!" Xu Cang suddenly became alert, but soon noticed something strange: "How can a good squad like Tian Ning be caught flying?"
Jianchuan-Tianning-Jianchuan is one of the rare and excellent flights of Blue Sky Airlines. It takes off at 9:30 in the morning and lands at 3:00 in the afternoon. The time is very good. It does not delay breakfast and lands at dinner time. Moreover, Tianning Airport is one of the hub airports in the east. The landing fee is three times that of ordinary airports, which is equivalent to the hourly fee of two hours.
This kind of timing is good, the air time is appropriate, the landing fee report is ready, and the shift that is not tiring to fly will usually only rotate among a few flight department leaders. How could it be Xu Cangfei's turn, or the catcher's turn?
Deep down, Xu Cang was of course willing to fly this flight, but he always felt that there was something fishy about it.
"Brother Cang, there's nothing we can do. No one's flying!" The dispatcher almost cried, "Brother Cang, please help me. We really can't find it. This is a route that our company focuses on to ensure punctuality. We can't have any problems."
Xu Cang slowly sat up: "But I find it a little unbelievable, could it be that there is someone from the bureau following the machine and monitoring it?"
Sometimes the authority will select a flight of an airline to conduct surveillance to see how the flight is operating. Apart from anything else, if there is someone from the authority sitting on the plane, it will make the passengers feel very uncomfortable. Therefore, if some pilots encounter such surveillance by the authority, they would rather give up the money and cancel the flight.
"Without the bureau and the plane, there is no one, literally no one." The dispatcher's tone became more and more urgent: "Brother Cang, this matter is a bit complicated. You will understand when you come to the company. Brother Cang, you have to help. There is really no one. Many flights have been cancelled."
"What?" Xu Cang found it more and more mysterious. However, since there was no pitfall, why not fly? A flight with five and a half hours of flight time can earn eight hours of hourly fees. If you don't fly, you're a fool.
"Okay, you make the plan. I'll go to the company right after I wash up." Xu Cang agreed readily.
The dispatcher was afraid that Xu Cang would not take it seriously: "Brother Cang, please hurry up. This flight is very important. If the number of delays increases, we may have to cancel this route later."
If an airline's punctuality rate on a certain route is too low, the authority will consider that it is unable to operate this route properly and may be able to revoke it.
The Tianning route is indeed quite profitable, but the flights there are too dense. If there is something that needs to be adjusted, the first thing to do is to postpone the departure time of airlines with no background, such as Blue Sky Airlines. This results in the departure time of Tianning flights usually being after 10 o'clock, and the punctuality rate is terrible.
In order to keep this route, Blue Sky Airlines listed this route as a key flight and mobilized all its connections both on and off the stage to ensure flight punctuality.
Once this flight is delayed, everyone from the crew to the dispatcher to the operations control will be held accountable, so the dispatcher will be so concerned.
"Got it, got it!" Xu Cangli made some assurances before hanging up the phone, muttering, "What's going on? It looks like something went wrong."
Even though he felt something strange in his heart, Xu Cang still resolutely chose to fly the flight in the face of the hourly fee.
After washing up, Xu Cang changed his clothes and took a taxi to the company. On the way, the dispatcher called again and asked where Xu Cang was, which showed how much he cared about it.
Arriving at the company gate, Xu Cang first looked around the gate, and didn't see anything unusual, just seemed a little deserted. Without thinking too much, Xu Cang pulled the suitcase and went inside the company. Before he even reached the flight preparation room, he could hear the sound of people chatting at the door, it was very lively.
Looking inside, there was only one table occupied, and the people chatting seemed to be at the information desk and the dispatch desk.
Xu Cang first blew away the alcohol, then went straight to the table where someone was sitting, and took a look at the mission book on the table. It was Fei Tianning's flight.
The captain supported his head with his right hand, looking listless. Seeing Xu Cang coming over, he asked weakly, "Are you the backup, or the catcher?"
"I'm catching the flight, Captain." Xu Cang said hurriedly.
"They are all captured!" The captain wiped his face and pointed at the first officer next to Xu Cang: "This guy is also captured. What's going on today? How can such a good class still let marginal people like us fly?"
It seems that this captain has a very clear understanding of his own position and is very harsh when it comes to self-deprecation.
The first co-pilot asked curiously, "Brother, did you catch the flying too? You don't look very energetic."
"It's more than not good! I didn't have work today, so I stayed up late to watch TV last night, and he caught me." The captain squinted his eyes hard, looking very uncomfortable: "We will be cruising soon, you two keep an eye on the plane, I need to catch up on my sleep, I can't stand it anymore."
"If you didn't get enough , you wouldn't have come. You're not a backup and you have no obligation to cooperate." asked the first co-pilot.
The captain got angry when he mentioned this: "When the dispatcher called me at the beginning, I said that I was too tired to fly. But less than five minutes later, my squadron leader called me and said that I didn't cooperate with the flight control. Later, when I was transferred to a Class A instructor, I would have to take it with me. I really wanted to thank them, so I had to come over."
"Since they've asked the squadron leader to come over and put pressure on us, that means there really is no one flying." The first co-pilot also felt strange: "But how could such a good squadron have no one flying?"
The captain chuckled and said, "I think it must be a ghost. I checked the weather in Tianning and it's very good. There's no risk of an emergency landing. The aircraft has no faults. I asked the dispatcher and he didn't receive any information from the traffic control. There's no problem at all. What else could this be?"
"Maybe there really is no one left?"
Just when the three flight crew members were confused, a clear female voice suddenly came from not far away. Following the voice, they saw that it was the cabin crew coming to do pre-flight coordination, and the voice was from the flight attendant in front.
Xu Cang glanced at the back of the crew and found Xia Shuyue there. Xia Shuyue noticed that Xu Cang was looking at her and winked at him mischievously.
The chief flight attendant looked quite old, and the captain called her "Sister Wang" when he saw her.
"What did you mean when you said there was really no one here?" The captain asked impatiently when the chief flight attendant came to the table.
The flight attendant spread his hands and said, "No one is flying anymore. What else can it mean? We also caught No. 3 and No. 6."
The captain was speechless: "I mean why is no one flying? Where did all those people go?"
"The hospital!" The flight attendant smiled strangely. "It's all over the place, and you don't know about it?"
"I don't usually pay attention to gossip." The captain asked curiously, "Why are they all going to the hospital?"
"Do a checkup." The flight attendant's eyes wandered over the three flight crew members, making Xu Cang feel creepy. "And it's not a routine checkup, it's an HIV checkup."
The captain was stunned: "HIV, AIDS? Why are they checking this? Employee benefits organized by the union? No, it's impossible that employee benefits will cause no one to fly."
"You really don't know." The flight attendant raised his eyebrows: "Yesterday, a flight attendant on Flight 9123 fainted before takeoff..."
At this point, Xu Cang, who was listening, froze on his face. How come he ended up eating the melon himself?
Compared to Xu Cang who had roughly guessed something, the captain became more interested: "And then?"
"Then the flight attendant was sent to the airport hospital for examination. It turned out that the flight attendant said that she had a low-grade fever and blood spots on her skin. So the doctor asked her to do several tests, including an HIV test, and the HIV test result was... positive."
While the chief flight attendant was talking, the captain was drinking mineral water. When he heard that a flight attendant was HIV positive, he spat out a mouthful of water. Due to his excitement, a small amount of water even came out of both nostrils.
After a brief moment of shock, the captain quickly showed a hint of fear and asked hurriedly, "Who is that flight attendant?"
The flight attendant said with a half-smile, "Wang Qian."
"Wang Qian?" The captain recalled for a moment and soon breathed a sigh of relief: "Not bad, not bad!"
As a person who had experienced this, the flight attendant immediately understood what the captain was worried about. She rolled her eyes and said, "You are fine, but some people are not."
The captain was stunned for a moment, but soon understood what the chief steward meant, but he was still a little uncertain: "You mean those people went to check because..."
"Yes, that's what you think." The flight attendant sighed, "It's really a mess."
Even though the captain and the flight attendant were speaking in riddles, Xu Cang understood them.
In the outside world's impression, the circle of pilots and cabin crew is a little bit chaotic. Of course, this is a biased impression, because Xu Cang has never lived what outsiders call a lewd life. For a person who keeps himself clean, there are some aspects of imagination that are relatively scarce.
However, even with his poor imagination, Xu Cang could still get some gossip from other colleagues' words that made him feel his worldview collapsed.
As the flight attendant just said, the flight attendant named Wang Qian tested positive for HIV, so sexual transmission, as one of the three major transmission routes, must be taken into consideration.
Given the flight attendant's relatively open attitude towards relationships between men and women, those men who had in-depth communication with her would have to go to the hospital to check whether they were also infected out of survival instinct?
Most of these men should be pilots or flight attendants, so there is a diffusion problem, that is, will women who have had intimate relationships with these men also experience corresponding anxiety and will they also have the urge to go to the hospital?
However, if the same situation continues to spread, more and more people will be affected. The fear of AIDS will destroy the rationality of the person concerned in a short period of time. The urgency of knowing whether they are infected is undoubtedly far greater than the sense of mission at work, which will undoubtedly lead to a sudden large number of people applying for leave.
In extreme anxiety, most people who apply for temporary leave will not care whether they still have a job. After all, nothing is more important than confirming the safety of their own lives.
If this happened to a large airline, the impact might not be that great, but Blue Sky Airlines is definitely not a company with abundant human resources. Faced with this kind of unexpected and bizarre incident, Blue Sky Airlines might not be able to withstand it.
For some reason, Xu Cang found that Xia Shuyue's eyes were almost glowing when she looked at him, as if they were brighter than before, which made Xu Cang full of question marks.
"As far as I know, our company has canceled nearly one-third of its flights today." The chief flight attendant was speechless when he said this: "Whether it is your flight dispatch or our crew dispatch, please schedule flights if you can. If you really can't find anyone, please use crews from other flights to support key flights."
Even if the captain knew some of the chaotic inside stories in the circle, it was strange that it could develop to this extent.
Seeing the captain and the two co-pilots' faces full of disbelief, the chief flight attendant sighed, "This isn't the most uncomfortable thing. The most uncomfortable thing is that so many flights have been cancelled at once. People outside seem to have noticed this. Our company will probably be in the newspapers tomorrow."
…
At this moment, in the office of the general manager of the flight department, Lu Jinghua was slumped in his chair, his head as big as a bucket. Opposite his desk was the deputy general manager of the flight department, Tan Wenbin.
"A total of 83 flights were cancelled today. We will try our best to contact passengers to reschedule and minimize the losses," reported Tan Wenbin.
"More than 80 flights?" Lu Jinghua's scalp was numb. He slammed the table fiercely and said, "Today, we will do our best to ensure the flights. Starting tomorrow, let the fleet check the flight crew members who asked for leave today one by one. If any of them fails to meet the leave application procedures and materials, they will be dealt with directly."
Lu Jinghua was really angry. These guys couldn't control their lower bodies and ended up causing trouble for the company. Shouldn't he teach them a lesson?
However, Lu Jinghua was reasonable. If the leave application procedures were in compliance with regulations, then Lu Jinghua would just accept it. As for those that were not in compliance, they would be punished by killing the chicken to scare the monkey.
"What about those who don't cooperate with the arrest?" Tan Wenbin asked, "Should these people also be warned?"
Lu Jinghua waved his hand: "It is not an obligation to cooperate in catching the flyers, so don't expand the punishment. By the way, we are so short of manpower now, where are those leaders? Have they not been pulled up to ensure the operation?"
Hearing Lu Jinghua mention this, Tan Wenbin's face turned strange: "Boss Lu, we have five Boeing squadrons, four Airbus squadrons, and a total of nine squadron leaders. Four of them already had their own tasks, and three of the remaining five had enough rest periods to cooperate with the flight arrest. But only one person cooperated with the flight arrest, and the other two refused to cooperate no matter what, and I don't know what they were busy with. There were also two who also had tasks, but they directly called the dispatch and asked the dispatch to cancel their plans, saying that there was an emergency."
Lu Jinghua's face changed as he heard this: "That is to say, four of the nine squadron leaders either refused to cooperate with the arrest without reason or forcibly demanded the cancellation of their flight missions?"
In fact, you don’t even have to think about what these four squadron leaders were doing; you can basically guess what they were doing.
"That's not all, Mr. Lu!" Tan Wenbin sighed. "This time, not only did the flight crew take temporary leave, but some ground administrative staff also had such a situation. For example, the assistants to the four squadron leaders all took leave..."
"This..." Lu Jinghua was dumbfounded: "Those four flight assistants are all... women?"
Tan Wenbin said nothing more, just nodded.
Lu Jinghua took a breath and gritted his teeth: "These guys!"
However, this is not the end. Tan Wenbin said with a worried look on his face: "These are not the most important things. There are too many flights cancelled today. The bureau has noticed it and has sent people to investigate. Mr. Lu, what should we do?"
Lu Jinghua leaned back and spread his hands. "What should we do? We have become a joke in the entire aviation industry. Let's wait for the authorities to come knocking on our door!"
