Scary moment on a flight today

Shhhh - I'm going to be on a 777 for 8 hours tomorrow night! :eek:

<Princess Leia> "Would it help if I got out and pushed?" </Princess Leia>
 
I was on a 737 back from Cologne at the end of last year and when they deployed the landing gear to land at Birmingham airport it didn't lock, you could hear the motor deploying them but no *thud* sound of it locking. You could hear the motor bring them back up and we then we aborted the approach and flew around again, luckily the second time it locked. They never mentioned anything to us about it.

If your interested in why aeroplanes crash then Air Crash Investigation on National Geographic is a very good series, it may put you of flying though. An interesting observation from watching them is that planes never crash due to one thing, it's always a chain of faults or bad luck.
 
Class 04 said:
What is hotlinking?
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Linking images directly from the source instead of uploading to a dedicated host such as Imageshack.

There's a couple of problems with hotlinking; firstly it eats up the sites bandwidth and secondly if the source image changes so does the one posted. Especially the case with Wikipedia - if someone changed that image to something quite unpleasant it would also appear in your post!
 
Blinkz said:
Just to make you all scared, it has! With varied results! An A330 ran out of fuel over the Atlantic due to a fuel leak, it glided 220miles and landed in the Azores. A 747 had all 4 engines flame out after flying through volcanic ash, it descended to around 6000' or so before it got 2 of its engines running again and it diverted and landed safely. A 767 ran out of fuel again and glided to land at a disued airfield in Canada.

I could go on......Don't you love Air Crash Investigations on National Geographic ;)
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I saw that air crash investigation where the 767 ran out of fuel & landed at a disused airfield, that supposedly disused airfield had been turned into a race track & was full of people who were just packing up for the day, but 2 children decided to ride the full lengh of the runway on their bikes as the plane was coming in to land, the planes nose wheel didnt lower properly which helped slow the plane down, also the plane hit a crash barrier thus avoiding the kids on bikes before coming to a stop everyone got off the plane & there were no serious injuries thankfully.

Never used tobe scared of flying but thanks to the aircrash investigation series which I find fascinating & this thread I'm a tad nervous now, I'm getting on a plane in July :eek:
 
Phil99 said:
Linking images directly from the source instead of uploading to a dedicated host such as Imageshack.

There's a couple of problems with hotlinking; firstly it eats up the sites bandwidth and secondly if the source image changes so does the one posted. Especially the case with Wikipedia - if someone changed that image to something quite unpleasant it would also appear in your post!
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Ah I see, so is it actually baned here?
 
Jokester said:
If you hotlink an image and it turns bad, we will suspend you for it. That's why we have a blanket ban on hotlinking to anything other than known image hosting sites.
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Understood! No idea why I didn't see that in the rules.

Cheers

EDIT: Oh, I am innocent! :)
 
RobH said:
But if your engine fails you can't just pull over. It's debatable because you're not actually in control of the vehicle so your trust is with the pilots.
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No, it isn't debateable. It is statistically one of the safest methods of travel. Total engine failure is a rare event, especially on a multi engined aircraft.
 
Ok I agree that statistically it is the safest but the fact is that you can't do anything if something does go wrong where as other forms of transport that are statistically less safe you might be able to.
 
RobH said:
Ok I agree that statistically it is the safest but the fact is that you can't do anything if something does go wrong where as other forms of transport that are statistically less safe you might be able to.
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But what are you going to do? Panic like everyone else and make the situation worse, that's what. I'd much rather have professionals who have been extensively trained for emergency situations to handle any incidents than some random panicking passenger.

It's the reason that air travel is so safe. The pilots, air traffic controllers, engineers, cabin crew, airport firemen etc... are all highly trained to take care of things when the crap hits the fan.

You might feel less safe because you are not in control but you are much better off not being in control.
 
Air travel is supposed to be the safest? All air travel?

I don't mind flying in planes, but going offshore in helicopters always makes me extremely nervous. They're noisey, they seem to vibrate much more, etc. Also, landing on a tiny helipad on a rig in windy conditions always makes me extremely nervous. We've all done the offshore training should the chopper ditch in the sea, but often out here the sea is frozen, not sure how thick the ice is sometimes.

Jets - not had many incidents. In about 200 odd flights I consider myself to be quite lucky! Some interesting moments like a perfect landing at Heathrow from Beijing (777) December 2006 in extremely thick fog where I couldn't even see the wings of the plane. Apparently the pilots had nothing to do with it though, all done by computer!

I landed at Tianjin the other day and the pilots engaged the thrust reversers before we had actually landed - we were still 20 metres(ish) off the ground. I don't remember that happening before.

Also, the other day our plane was late arriving, and they wanted a quick turn-around. So they didn't restock the plane with food! It was a very nervous moment, but luckily I was sat near the front, so managed to get one of the very few meals they sill had left.
 
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