runway

Leak In The Drinking Water Tank

January 20, 2010

in Airplane Stories

Several years ago, on a trip from Hartford to San Francisco, we had to change planes at ORD.  We were on United. The first leg of the trip was uneventful (in the words of John Cleese: “it was relatively crash-free”).  We had a short connection, but we made it to our gate in time.  We boarded the plane for the leg from ORD to SFO and all seemed well.  We pulled away from the gate, and then stopped.  We sat for a while on the tarmac, before the captain came on the PA to tell us that there was a small technical problem that needed to be fixed before we could depart.  Maintenance personnel were on their way, and he estimated we would be on our way in 30 minutes.

 Well, you all know how those 30 minutes delays can grow.  Maintenance people showed up.  We could see them milling around the plane.  After an hour, the captain came on the PA again and told us that the problem was that there was a leak in the… (wait for it)… drinking water tank.  The tank was emptying itself onto the tarmac.  Well, as the Captain explained, FAA regulations did not allow a plane to go on a flight as long as ours (4ish hours) without sufficient drinking water on board.  So they had to fix the leak in the tank and refill it before we could take off.

It was the middle of the summer, and about 95 degrees in Chicago.  This wasn’t a big deal, until about 1.5 hours into this whole ordeal; the pilot told us that he had to shut down the engines to save fuel.  Of course, since we were on the tarmac and not at the gate, we could not hook up to ground power, so off went the AC.  The Captain assured us that this would be a short-lived problem, as we would be on our way soon.  Yeah, right.

So not to belabor this, the wait turned into 4 and a half hours.  By the end of it, it was about 100 degrees inside the plane, and everyone inside had become that smelly person no one wants to sit next to.

So here’s the kicker.  After 4-1/2 hours the Captain comes on and says that he has ordered catering to bring extra bottled water and soft drinks on board so that we could go ahead and leave without the water tank being fixed.  So why didn’t he think of this 4 hours previous?  For that matter, I don’t know why they didn’t serve us anything to drink during those hours either.   But anyway, it took a half hour for catering to do their thing and we were on our way.   We had sat for a total of 5 hours on the tarmac, in stifling heat with nothing to drink.  Had we just departed on schedule, we would have been in SF in only 4 hours.  So we went without anything to drink for an extra hour for,… well, our own convenience I suppose.  The irony of the whole thing, was that the Captain told the FA’s to serve free alcohol as a compensation for our troubles, so nobody drank the extra water anyway.

Just because this was not bad enough, when we got to SFO, our luggage was not there.  It was still in Chicago because, as the baggage agent explained, ‘the connection had been too short to transfer the bags’.  Ahhh United, how do I hate thee?  Let me count the ways.

Demotage

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Tagged as: alcohol, baggage, delay & cancellation, odor, pilot, runway, united airlines

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Plane Bucks and Bounces Like An Angry Bronco

September 2, 2009

in Airplane Stories

I’ve been a frequent flier for longer than I can remember.  I’ve seen just about everything, and experienced just about everything.  With that in mind, some things that I either take for granted, or just let pass, are a true hell for others.  So here’s a story about a flight from hell – one for a few fellow passengers, AND a pilot! 

Dateline, 1989 – American Airlines – Miami to Newark 

As everyone knows, flights from Miami north to Newark NJ can be a bit dicey.  Especially when there are storms in the central states and the jet-stream is moving on its high-speed trajectory eastwards. 

I was seated in the aisle, next to a young couple.  About 20 minutes into the flight, we started getting bounced about.  The kind of bouncing that makes your stomach do that little flip-flop, and you can feel the tail end of the plane swing left and right.  Outside the window was streaming rain and flashes of lightning. 

The couple to my right were white-knuckled.  I could see where they were holding hands, and their skin was pale from the pressure of each other’s fingers.  Every time the plane jolted, they held their breath.  Flight attendants were seated the entire flight and sounds of vomiting passengers towards the rear of the plane were occasionally heard in the otherwise silent tension throughout the cabin.

 I decided to catch a nap – it had been a long day.  And for me, this was just another bumpy flight.  So I leaned my seat back and closed my eyes. 

I woke up about a half hour or 40 minutes later.  The plane was still bucking like an angry bronco.  The couple next to me were talking quietly, smiling, and playing chess with a little magnetic travel board.  Now, I’m not one to chit-chat on a plane, but I did ask them if they were becoming more comfortable with all the bouncing about.  The woman told me that what made them relax a bit was the fact that I was sleeping – she told me that they had both figured that if someone was apparently so used to the bouncing that they could go to sleep, then they probably shouldn’t be all that nervous.  Glad to oblige I guess… 

But it does get… worse… 

I learned afterwards that during the mid-late 1970′s, American Airlines had gone through a period where those people doing the hiring preferred Navy pilots.  Now, you might wonder what that has to do with anything, but remember how Navy pilots have to fly when landing on a carrier.  That carrier is moving about, and the runway is short.  It’s not entirely unlike landing on a steady runway when your plane is moving about. 

As we approach Newark, the storm is still very heavy.  The final descent has the couple a bit white knuckled again as the plane is constantly buffeted left and right.  The tail swings… the wings dip… the plane shakes and rattles… we approach the runway… I can see the lights…  At the last moment, I feel the plane pitch sharply to the right.  The pilot responds like a pro – he slams the plane down HARD…  just as one would do on an aircraft carrier. 

But an MD80 is not an F16… There was a bone-rattling jolt as we hit, along with a loud sound I was unable to identify.  Passengers screamed… air masks fell from the overheads…  engines roared loud as the plane “scraped” to a stop.  And it did stop.  Completely. 

And we sat there, not quite at the end of the runway.  A few moments later, the engines shut down.  After a confused few minutes, the pilot’s voice came over the speakers to give us the good news.  Apparently, he was forced to land the plane so hard, that more than half the tires had burst on impact.  We were unable to taxi to the gate.  After about 1/2 an hour, stair-mobiles and buses arrived to allow us to deplane. 

As I got off, the flight attendants offered their kind “buh-bye”  “thank you for flying with us”  etc. etc.  The pilot, however, stood in the cockpit door staring down the length of the plane and shaking his head and mumbling what seemed like obscenities to his first officer. 

I had waited for the very eager masses to exit, and was one of the last off of the plane.  I smiled to him and said… “rough flight huh.”  He nodded and told me I didn’t know the half of it.  Apparently, he’d be stuck in the plane for hours yet, as he was responsible for writing down the serial numbers of each and every air mask that had fallen from the overheads – almost a hundred of them.  I nodded sympathetically to that very tired Captain, smelling slightly of brimstone, and holding a clipboard with a ticket to “paperwork hell.”

SAW

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Tagged as: american airlines, near disaster, pilot, runway, vomit, weather

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Plane’s Wing Kisses The Concrete

May 13, 2009

in Airplane Stories

I was flying from Memphis, through Pittsburgh, on my way to ABE to attend my uncle’s funeral. I was not in a particularly cheerful mood, especially since he was my only uncle and I loved him a lot. USAir had upgraded me to 1A and the flight was uneventful, although delayed out of Memphis because of a flat tire. Uneventful until we touched down in Pittsburgh. Suddenly the plane started vibrating, then shaking, then as I looked out the window, the right wing kissed the concrete in a shower of sparks. We skidded down the runway, sparks flying, tires screaming, folks hollering and feeling like we were in a mix-master until the plane came to a final stop. There was silence for a moment, eerie almost, until the captain ordered the doors open on the right side, chutes deployed and all passengers to exit.

I was among the first off and helped other passengers get up and get moving at the bottom of the chute. I couldn’t stop from looking over my shoulder every once in awhile at that wing, no more than a foot from the grass, still on the concrete. The entire landing gear assembly on that side was gone, lying in ditch back along the runway. I mean it broke right off! No wonder the wing tip was down. The pilot kept that wing away from the soft dirt and an almost certain cart wheel had the wing dug in. Quite a job of steering I’d say.

While I have great admiration and thankfulness for that crew, USAir’s maintenance is another story. And you know, after writing customer service and being an elite flyer on USAir at the time, I never heard a word from the airline. Hmmmm.

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Tagged as: near disaster, pilot, runway, US airways

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Attempting To Get Airborne In Antarctica

May 7, 2009

in Odds & Ends Stories

Having done quite a bit of traveling to date, I’ve experienced a number of oopsies, some the airline’s fault, some a passenger’s fault and some simply an act of God. These include getting hit up for a bribe by airport staff in Belem, Brazil in 1989, taking two days to get from Orlando, FL to Boston, MA during a blizzard, and so on.

However, probably the most fun I’ve had was at the hands of the US Navy when I was trying to leave McMurdo station (in the Antarctic) in 1991.

I was finishing up our second of three field seasons and had, along with my personal gear and some scientific samples, a half ton of seismic equipment that absolutely had to be in Bangladesh within two weeks. Problem was, we were snowed in and the Navy C-130s (outfitted with skis) could not land, and those on the field could not take off.

Finally, after about a week, I was told that I could get on a C-130 and head for New Zealand. My seismic equipment, however, would have to wait for another flight. Granted, in my youth, I was very naïve, but I was not this naïve, so I volunteered to bump myself from the flight and insisted that I not be put on a later flight unless my equipment was loaded as well. This got me a few evil looks from the sergeant in charge of cargo, but as far as I was concerned, I was doing her a favor.

A couple days go by and we’re all scheduled for a departing flight. The same sergeant tells me that she had to bump three people to accommodate my equipment, to which I replied, “I made arrangements for this gear to be flown out of here over a year ago, if you can’t figure out how to manage this in that amount of time, I have no sympathy for you.” Oddly, me, my gear and a couple colleagues make it onto the flight.

Now, the next problem is getting off the ground. The C-130 is overloaded due to the backlog and the runway, which is seasonal ice covered by a fair amount of fresh snow, is not very slick (remember that these are C-130 Hercules specially equipped with skis). We hear the engines rev and we roll. The only points of reference on the all-white terrain are a set of numbered flags, counting down from ten to one. Flag number one approaches and the pilot hits the brakes, does a one-eighty, and we roll again, with similar results. This performance repeats several times with one brief moment of optimism when the pilot actually manages to rotate the C-130, only to have the nose-gear hit the runway with a disappointing “thud.”

Enter the load master.

Typically, the load-master on a C-130 is a short, barrel-chested senior enlisted person of the male half of the human species; he doesn’t talk much, but he does a great job intimidating people with oh-so-harsh-but-subtle expressions. Ironically, he must have called in sick today because our load-master on this particular flight was the one and only female load-master in a ten-thousand mile radius.

…did I mention that she was in dire need of a sedative?

Chipper, happy, cheerful – a real pain in the posterior. She asked me and a colleague if we would mind coming aft with her. She then points at the loading ramp and asks if we would mind climbing as far up it as possible, preferably so we ended up right under the tail of the aircraft. This was to get some more weight aft and hopefully help the C-130 rotate and then get airborne. Naturally, there was nothing to strap ourselves to, so all we could do was grab something, anything, and hope that it wasn’t a 600 volt conduit (electrical, hydraulic and other critical parts are exposed as there is no decorative bulkheads in military aircraft). After a couple more runs down the runway, we finally get airborne.

On returning to my seat another of my travelling companions tells me that had we not made it into the air on that last attempt that the ground crew was going to strap some JATOs to the fuselage. These are solid rocket boosters and the C-130 can take up to (at least) eight of them, four per side. While this is great for giving an overloaded brute the kick it needs to get airborne, JATOs do have the unfortunate habit of exploding once in a while.

We make the (normally) eight hour return trip to Christchurch, New Zealand in no less than nine hours – and we had a tailwind!

Naturally, anyone in the military must have stories that far outstrip my own experience.

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Tagged as: bumping, military, runway, weather

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Deer On The Runway

May 4, 2009 Animal Stories

When I would go visit my family in Arkansas, I sometimes flew little puddle jumpers to either Texarkana, El Dorado or Camden. The first time I fly to El Dorado, it was quite the experience. The lady sitting across the aisle from me was from Mexico and didn’t speak a word of English. It was [...]

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Frigid Flight

October 13, 2008 Weather Stories

This was the proverbial flight from hell that put me off flying for several years. Back in the mid 80’s I was returning to Calgary from Ottawa during a long cold winter. Waiting to board I watched them de-ice the plane as it must have been at least -20C. Once on board there seemed to [...]

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Earthquake In The Sky

September 13, 2008 Weather Stories

I don’t fly much, maybe two or three times a year tops. I flew to Florida this year to be in my best friend from high school’s beach wedding in June. I flew with Air Tran from Philadelphia and I had a stop in Atlanta. I should say here I NEVER have any issues at [...]

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Tornado On The Runway

December 13, 2007 Weather Stories

As a freshman in college a few years ago, I became extremely homesick within the first two days. I wanted to go home, but my mom promised me that if I stayed a while to give it a chance, she would visit me the following month. We booked flights for her that night. So mid-September [...]

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Parked Plane Gets ‘Discovered’ – During A Landing

December 5, 2007 Odds & Ends Stories

In August of 2001, my mom, younger sister & I flew from our home in D.C. to Phoenix, Arizona for my older sister’s wedding. At the time it was cheaper to use BWI than National and we didn’t live within sight of Dulles until a few years later. Because we had booked a flight earlier [...]

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Fearful Flight

October 12, 2007 Airplane Stories

I was flying from Colorado Springs to Washington National via Chicago O’Hare for a training course in the Research Triangle area. During take-off out of Chicago there was a loud noise from underneath the front aircraft, leading the pilot to believe that we may have blown a tire or something on the front landing gear. [...]

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