This deadset legend did what half a dozen men couldn’t do on their own, stop a catering cart that was spinning out of control.
A wild scene played out earlier today at Chicago O’Hare airport (ORD) as a catering cart spun out of control in an infinite reverse loop, spewing cans of soda in a 360-degree spray pattern. If it wasn’t for the quick thinking of Envoy Ramp Instructor Jorge Manalang, that catering cart would still be spinning right now.
Check out the video thanks to Kevin Klauer OD, EJD via Twitter below.
We can see ground crew workers trying their darndest to jump into the front driver’s seat of this glorified golfcart and failing. Before video started, presumably one grounds crew worker almost made it into the driver’s seat, failed, and fell on his back.
The tricky part about this whirling dervish of Diet Coke is since this cart is spinning in reverse with the driver’s seat rotating in the outermost circle, making any attempt to jump into the front is that much harder.
With the cart slowly spinning towards the plane, a multi-million dollar investment, a hero emerges.
Jorge shows up in a red airport tug from stage right, uses the business end of the tug to stop the tornado of tonic, and tips the catering cart over on its side.
In a piece by Envoy published shortly after,
““I was just doing my job,” said Jorge. “Safety is our number one priority and I did not want anyone to get hurt, so I used the pushback to stop the cart.”
You can’t teach this decision making during employee orientation.
In hindsight, he took a calculated risk, decommissioning a catering cart probably at the tail-end of its life, saving an airplane from certain damage.
I’m sure there’ll be an investigation what happened but who cares, this guy’s a daggum hero and I hope Chicago O’Hare recognize him for it.
I’ll just add my comment to the endless number of folks who want to correct you on the American Airlines Woman who stopped the cart.
It wasn’t a woman, and it wasn’t American but an Envoy employee.
You lost any credibility you might have had as a news source.
Wow, egg on my face. Thanks for the heads up. Better to correct woman to man instead of the other way around, amirite? The dozens (9 dozen to be exact) of people who came across this blog post would’ve flipped!