Scary moment on a flight today
- Thread starter Bes
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It extends those out to create extra drag.
Oof, bet that put the ******'s up ya! :O
Had an interesting landing a month or so back.
Air France landing at Heathrow - had been an extremely turbulent flight due to the bad winds we were having. Nearing the airport we were crusing fairly low and it was shaking and dropping all over the place. I'm a fairly good flyer so was pretty chilled but people were being sick, etc.
We neared the runway and the place was still all over the place and was coming in diagonally (although I hear this is the correct way with crosswind...?) Anyway we touched down and kangaroo'd and looked as if we were not going to straighten up. Engines go into overdrive and we take back off again.
We circled twice and the turbulance was still really bad! The second touchdown was just as bad but we made it down. Think the landing gears would need some serious maintenance afterwards
Had an interesting landing a month or so back.
Air France landing at Heathrow - had been an extremely turbulent flight due to the bad winds we were having. Nearing the airport we were crusing fairly low and it was shaking and dropping all over the place. I'm a fairly good flyer so was pretty chilled but people were being sick, etc.
We neared the runway and the place was still all over the place and was coming in diagonally (although I hear this is the correct way with crosswind...?) Anyway we touched down and kangaroo'd and looked as if we were not going to straighten up. Engines go into overdrive and we take back off again.
We circled twice and the turbulance was still really bad! The second touchdown was just as bad but we made it down. Think the landing gears would need some serious maintenance afterwards
'twas a BAe 146- think it's a slightly bigger plane than the Avro (I've noticed they seem to use the avro on the less busy midweek flights? My brother's old employer's wife works for British Aerospace in Filton, Bristol where they are maintained, and he's heard some stories from her about how the Bae146 is a pretty old aircraft with some dodgy and outdated mechanics/ systems....
No explanation, other than sorry about that etc...
No explanation, other than sorry about that etc...
The Avro RJ and BAe 146 are the same plane and they are getting on a bit nowadays. They're not *that* bad - just not quite up with the modern boys.
Nothing more than a passing observation but there would appear to be an increasing number of incidents involving them. We had one block the runway at Stansted shortly after taking off from London City during the week.
Nothing more than a passing observation but there would appear to be an increasing number of incidents involving them. We had one block the runway at Stansted shortly after taking off from London City during the week.
I have one, bit of a badly written essay though !
edit: just found a sweary that snuck in, think thats all of them though, sorry if i've overlooked one.
On the 17th october i took off on a flight with mum, my brother and my sister. Destination new york
Ive gota admit though....i can remember little of it, and no that isn't because of heavy drinking (for once) its because of the shockingly bad plane journeys !
The way there was 2 hours late.....fair enough, i can cope with that, especially seeing as im generally a few hours late for things myself
Miraculously (for those that know me) we managed to get there ontime ! However once again the plane was late, 4 hours this time...not cool, but not a huge problem.
When they got us onto the plane they were still actually doing all the pre-flight tests and werent ready for another 20minutes...infact rather worryingly they had to "restart the computer" in a very windows 98 way which envolved plunging the entire plane into a dark eery silence.
At this point my brother was like "errr......is that really a good sign?" turned out it really wasn't.......
Later on that flight we were landing at bermuda (its not a direct flight) when the pilot had to pull up sharply.......and i mean sharply..he piped up on the radio that he was sorry, but the air traffic control had given him the wrong coordinates for the runway..
WTF !!!! How the hell can an air traffic controll tower direct us the wrong way, another windows reboot maybe ? On landing a woman screamed as we slid(yes slid) along the runway, again not terribly re-assuring.
We took off slightly later, once the bermuda lot had entered the plane and started the long climb back up to 35,000ft. After a few hours, i started noticeing that.....we werent leveing out at all, still going up.
The pilot ironically spotted this as the best time to make the announcement that "we had to turn back to new york as the wings werent moving properly"......i think the thought of plungeing 35 thousand ft must phase my brother a little, as he gave me a rather alarmed look at this point.
I mean..what kind of a plane has wings that don't work ? Well anyway we flew all the way back to new york( bermuda's emergency facilities aren't big enough.....yeh not good).
Apparantly i slept straight through 4 emeregency procedure video's they were showing mid flight...all the extra "incase of crash" style ones, nothing like insuring confidence in people like safety video's.
3/4 hours later i was woken by the cold (apparantly they were running the aircon on full to waste fuel....although im not entirely sure that was the logic in it) and to be told that we were coming into land.
Now i have a query for you......how do you land at one of the USA's biggest busiest airports, in a plane that can't use its wings to turn?
Well the answer is flipping slowly !!!! Using the rudder on the plane to steer took ages to decend us to the ground. My sister came back at this point(she ignores all those "sit in your seat now" announcements) to say they had filled the bathrooms with towels.....think preparing towels like a midwife would...
At this point i was rather intrested how near my nearest exit was.....and how long it really did take for fire to spread to the fuel tanks.
The final landing was *** scary...(and i have to swear there, as theres no substitute (no, you really don't), all the passengers were silent as anything....its one of those times where you could imagine time itself actually slowing down.
The plane went down faster than normal....and just.....glided onto the runway, and felt like it almost slammed every type of break it had on....whilst a squadron of fire engines(say 10 ? ) escourted the plane to a standstill.... at the very end of the runway.
So we survived ! Fantastic.........but slight problem being in that we were still on the wrong side of the atlantic.
Then we had to got hrough all passport controll etc........sleep on the floor a few hours, before finally being told to find a taxi to get to some random hotel in long island.
In there defence the hotel rocked, 5* and £200 a night per room (and we got 2).......but at 4am a ******* travel lodge woulda done.
The next day they messed us around for ages, so we just sat in having a good natter about them, before they finally flew over a plane from canada to take us home.
Again, few hours later than it should have been because the cabin crew got stuck at passport controllWhen we got on the plane it turned out to be a ******* sardine can...both the smell and the size!
The guy infront of me actually fell straight through his delapidated seat, to give you an example of the quality.
The air stewardess pointed out that the plane dosn't usually have to do cross atlantic flights as it "wasn't suited".
But hell......it got us home ! And i have to say, the canadian stewardess's are very nice, one even got my sister an extra meal when i asked for an extra (shed asked for the vegi option by mistake whilst in a semi sleepen daze, apparantly she was "really looking forward to the chicken and pasta"..so had to say something).
edit: just found a sweary that snuck in, think thats all of them though, sorry if i've overlooked one.
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They can do, and many people have died when it happens as a result. Not always does the plane crash - there ahve been incidents where people get rippe d out, but other times it does go down. Things like that are very rare now, though, used to happen much more in the sventies.
Airline safety has become exceptionally good.
Airline safety has become exceptionally good.
146 was the only plane I have been in for an emergency landing when the flaps would not fully deploy or retract, and as the 146 relies on them for braking as it has no thrust reversers it was interesting. Flew around Brum for 30 minutes to burn the fuel off and then came in fast and hard!