Have you ever been flying and had your engine flame out within 5 minutes following takeoff? I have.
http://www.nbcactionnews.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=c50c4bd9-4651-4eab-9a07-f242cb0c6928&rss=764
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/17083436/detail.html?rss=den&psp=news
I can say that I felt an unsettling shake in the plane. My first reaction was that it was one of three things: the flaps, the landing gear, or the engine. When it did, the main lights in the cabin went out and the plane stopped shaking. There was an eerie silence. The passengers on the faulty engine's side of the plane were all glued to their windows, so I saw nothing.
Eventually, one person pressed the call button. Another followed, then another.
In two minutes that felt like an eternity, the passenger started to grow restless. No one knew what had happened, what was happening. The cockpit audio channel had been shut off. The guy sitting next to me wondered out loud if we were in trouble.
I cannot say that I saw fire or smoke. The windows were covered with people trying to see the engine. We could make out that we were turning, slowly, in one direction. I knew that the plane was capable of operating with one engine (and was), so I wasn't really worried. Nevertheless, every second that went by with no word increased the tension.
Finally, after a few minutes, the pilot came on and told us there was a problem with the engine that we were going back to KC. The purser on the flight then gave a comical (darkly comical) announcement about how everything was fine because the captain said so. So we're fine. 'Cuz he said so. She was serious; I found it funny that she was nervous and trying very poorly to hide it.
Anyway, we made it on the ground okay, to see fire trucks and the like. The captain said "don't worry about them, that's just part of procedure- there's no fire." Some people claimed they smelled smoke, but it couldn't be smoke from the wing engine smelled inside the cabin. Occassionally I smell a little combustion smell at the start of the air system, but I know that's not smoke.
Everything ended up fine, just costing us almost an extra day to get home and me an additional vacation day.
The experience was... interesting.
3 comments:
Glad you're alright. Hope you got a free flight voucher out of it.. (?)
Believe it or not, but I was on a plane that collided with another plane. We were taxi-ing, so it wasn't THAT exciting, but still.. maybe it was the threat of whiplash that motivated the extra flight vouchers we got. (In addition to the next day flight)
I didn't realize they were so litigious in Japan, or more I would hope that they didn't have ambulance chasers in other parts of the world. Nevertheless, we were given the option of $100 off, 20% off, or 4000 flyer miles.
The compensation seems like sparing little compared to "sorry you crapped your pants and will wake up in night sweats for a few weeks, not to mention on and off again for years to come," but I don't believe they -have- to do it when you read the fine, fine print of your ticket purchase. Buying cheap really means you are SOL.
I had almost forgotten it less than 5 days later, but then I'm sure there were others that haven't taken it so well.
the extra ticket offer was made by Northwest. The incident happened on a flight to Japan from Portland PDX. ... litigation doesn't happen here in Japan, but reputation is HUGE so I'm sure a similar type of offer (or better) would have been made here.
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