Terrifying Flight in Aer Lingus Turboprop

October 4, 2013

in Airplane Stories

Every year my family and I fly from Cardiff, Wales to Dublin, Ireland with Aer Lingus. The flight is around one hour. The plane they use is an ATT 72-500 series aircraft. It’s a turboprop and it can carry around 80 people in a 2-2 configuration. The last time we flew with them we had an extremely bad weather pattern holding over the airport in Dublin.

Our flight had left Cardiff at 11:45 am and had taken off to the east. The plane made a left turn towards Ireland and continued over the valleys, Brecon Beacons and then over the Irish Sea. All had been well until we came to land in Dublin. We descended into extremely thick black clouds. The sound of thunder filled the cabin and lightning was striking around us. We were around 6000 feet high when a bolt hit the wing. The aircraft shook a bit and we continued on course.

Around 2 minutes later I looked out of the window onto the wing. The engine prop wasn’t spinning. It had stopped. Just after I noticed this the captain came over the PA system and said, “Sorry about the little scare there. We had to shut down the left engine as a precaution. There was nothing to worry about. Cabin crew please take your seats for landing.”

We descended out of the clouds into thick, heavy rain which battered the aircraft. As we were descending downwards we came into the airport boundaries. Just as we were about to hit the runway the plane flipped to the left. I looked out of the window to see the wing just about missing the ground. We tried to straighten out but couldn’t. We went back up. We again struggled to get through the clouds. When we got above the clouds and into the blue sky the left engine restarted. The captain said that we were going to divert to Kerry. We landed in Kerry and Aer Lingus organised for us to fly back to Dublin later that night. We landed in Dublin at around 11:00 pm.

{ 0 comments… add one now }

Leave a Comment
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *




Previous post:

Next post: