honor guard

[YVINTERN]

Three sides actually but I'm glad you chipped in on this matter and stopped lurking! Welcome to USAV officially.

 

[LGA Fleet Service]

I realize the US people work for a cheap-arsed carrier with underpaid megalomaniacs "running" the show into the ground, but, for you to presume what you did is just as pathetic as many vicious rumors I hear. Thanks for participating.

Hey thanks for waking up this morning...Deleted by moderator.

 

[JoeDirt]

Before we all jump to any conclusions or for that matter "convict" the guy before we all know the facts I think we should all stop and realize that first of all Matrix doesn't even know himself for a fact that this happened. If you read his post it starts out "did you hear". Now for those of us who have been working for the airlines long enough, we know not to believe anything unless you hear it from the "horses" mouth themself.

I just so happened to be working flight 421 on Jan 25th and I had a birds eye view of the whole procession as did my fellow co workers. We watched from begining to end and not one time did I or any of the other two see any disrepect of the flag taking place. They (the agents and the Phoenix police) drove up to the plane and eveyone was waiting to do their parts in making sure the fallen agent was taken care of respectfully. There was no family present as the family was waiting in El Paso when we arrived, along with the honor guard who happened to be holding the folded flag that was to be given to the family.

We had five of the Border Patrol agents on our flight escorting the casket back to El Paso, who also happened to be down on the tarmac in Phoenix showing their respects, and not one of them mentioned to us anything about a ramper being disrespectful with the flag. I had asked several questions to them about the process they go thru when a fallen officer dies and they said that everything we saw was protocol.

I had even taken pictures of the process myself while on the airplane, along with our First Officer, and neither one of us saw anything out of the ordinary. It was a very somber moment.

So before we all have ill feelings toward this ramper, maybe we should wait to hear exactly what happened from him, before we take the word of Matrix who again doesn't even know for sure himself since he was not present.

I would like to think that the majority of us are mature enough to know that there are always TWO sides to every story.

Welcome
I have waited till now to post on this subject. I have been a rat for quite a while and have only handled one honor guard escorted HR. I have had many that have been escorted by a single soldier but this one time it was actually a full honor guard. My shift mgr told us to position the beltloader and step away. We stepped back and remained respectful and quiet while they did their duty for their fallen brother. The soldiers escorting(I think it was 6 soldiers) actually climbed into the bin and unloaded the HR themselves. The flag was not placed on the casket until it was out of the aircraft. We had the chance to talk to these soldiers in the breakroom before the A/C came to the gate. Shift managers were present the whole time. It was a very moving experence.

 

[Awa Native]

These are the photo's that I took from inside the airplane in order as it happened. I am not sure what you mean Joe Dirt about the flag situation and not being on the casket until it was out of the aircraft. Like I said before in my post, our employee's were very respectful from what I saw in how they handled the situation. There is no easy way to handle a situation like this.

 

[YVINTERN]

There we have it folks...don't jump to conclusions...thanks AWA!

 

[rat tales]

There we have it folks...don't jump to conclusions...thanks AWA!

Is the last picture "end of story", or is the person in the lower right corner the agent in question with the incident occuring after the casket
was placed on the belt? Was the shot really fired from the grassy knoll? Still a mystery!

 

[EMBFA]

Where's the shot of the supposed crime?

If the faux pas did actually occur, I'm quite sure it wasn't intentional. You can't expect someone to know military ceremonies or even flag protocol. Since there is a war going on with Americans being killed and this sad situation will present itself again, perhaps volunteers employees could do it or the honor guard could brief the rampers.

Whether the flag was compromised or not is of no importance to that poor family. Hopefully their loss won't be trivialized any further.

 

[YVINTERN]

what if the flag got jammed on the belt huh...huh...

 

[Harry Callahan]

AWA Native:
Welcome & thanks for posting the pics.

 

[Awa Native]

In response to Rat Tale's question, that just happened to be the last photo I took, once the border patrol agents loaded the body on to the belt loader, the gentleman you see off to the right was standing there in case the agents needed some assistance with loading the casket. He was standing off to the side to let the agents take care of their fallen brother. Once they got the casket loaded the ramper then started the loader. All the while the agents stood by on either side and gave him a salute and they stayed there until the casket had been placed in the cargo hold. Once the casket was secure they then slowly stopped their salute and stood by in a moment of silence as one last tribute to their brother. After that the camera's and the photographers started packing up their gear.

 

[hula-flyguy]

Thank you for the pics. I knew there had to be some!


Now, will this be the end, or do we need more "what ifs" to hash out?

 

[YVINTERN]

Mods...can we please close this thread out since the original poster's conjecture was proven wrong/a rumor.