Posted on 06/20/2012 10:14:52 AM PDT by lbryce
A mechanical failure sent a JetBlue plane like this one careening wildly through the skies, sparking panic among the 155 people aboard the Las Vegas to New York flight, passengers told The Post yesterday.
“It was four hours of hell,” said Travis McGhie, who described how the plane kept lurching from side to side and going into steep turns when its hydraulic system failed Sunday.
“People were getting sick. Some people were throwing up. There were a lot of people getting nauseous,” said another passenger, Tom Mizer.
The crew did everything they could to prevent panic. One flight attendant walked down the aisle saying: “Look at me — I’m smiling. If I was scared, you would know it. If I’m not scared, you don’t need to be,” Mizer said.
There was no screaming, but “there were definitely people reacting out loud,” said McGhie.
Mizer and McGhie, both Brooklyn residents, realized something was wrong as soon as the full Airbus lifted off from the Vegas airport.
“You could hear a screeching — an obvious mechanical screeching,” said Mizer. “We were bouncing around a lot.”
One of the pilots declared an emergency and radioed Las Vegas controllers that they were dealing with “quite a few things, but the initial thing is . . . we’ve lost two hydraulic systems.”
The plane was loaded with five hours’ worth of fuel. Because the A320 is incapable of dumping excess fuel, the pilots circled the area south of the Vegas Strip until they’d burned enough to allow the crippled plane to land safely.
“People on board got a little freaked. People were upset. Nobody was crazy, but everyone was upset.
“It became a long, sort of very tense waiting game,” Mizer said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Nice try but no cigar, the models mentioned are no longer in service for the most part and even the ones mentioned did not have it but it was added after initial production
Pumping it in at one end, flushing it out the other?
I try to avoid flying Airbus as much as possible.
Socialists should not be trusted to manufacture anything more complicated than a cigar.
Re-reading Dress her in Indigo so the name caught my eye also :)
I’ve read all of his books... ;~)
I noticed that, too. I thought maybe he was traveling under an alias. :-)
If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going!
It's not that those other aircraft you mention are horribly dangerous. But if you were in an aircraft and you had a serious cabin fire onboard, would you rather be in an aircraft that can dump fuel quickly, turn around and land, or an aircraft that has to stay aloft for a long period of time to burn off weight/fuel before it can attempt to land?
Excellent!
Hydraulic problems on an aircraft sometimes (often) increase in severity as time progresses. When you have a situation like that you want to stay as close to your runway as possible. Even though they stayed up to burn off fuel to reduce the risk of a catestrophic landing incident, they were always balancing the rick of landing overweight with the controlability problems they were experiencing. Has their hydraulic situation gotten worse they may have been forced to put the aircraft down, despite being overweight.
It was a bad situation that could have got much worse, pretty quick...and that “aw shit” moment wouldn’t be a good time to be an hour from the nearest runway.
Many airliners cannot dump fuel. Many can. The requirement is clear in the link I provided earlier. The airliners that cannot dump fuel, have no need for the capability. They are capable of good performance with full fuel tanks.
The A320, as with other airliners, including Boeing airliners, is capable of landing with full fuel tanks if necessary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_dumping
Not “rick”...but “risk”
Thanks for that info. My BIL is a captain for a major airlines (20+ yrs); so my info is from him directly. He’s dumped fuel on a few occassions.
However, as a non-commercial pilot (just a silly engineer) I would think that an aircraft with functional engines, but failing and/or over-heating hydraulics - my goal would be to reduce the weight of the aircraft as much as possible before attempting a landing. This would reduce the work requied by the brakes when the emergency landing was finally required.
From my BIL, a pilot who lands an aircraft and does structural damage to the aircraft - does not do his career any great service. If you make an emergency landing and save the plane, you are a hero. If you make an emergency landing and damage the plane - without doing what was practical and SOP for that scenario - you run a risk of being grounded. Dumping fuel is pretty much SOP.
A favorite JDMc book of mine...”The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything”...a non-Travis McGee novel, but a good read.
Sort of reminds me of this...
Flying is the second greatest thrill known to man....
Landing is the first!
Some data: The Boeing B737 entered service 44 years ago and has an average fatality rate due to all causes of about 91 per year over that time. The Airbus A320 entered service 26 years ago and has an average fatality rate due to all causes of about 135 per year over that time.
Same here on a full 747 years ago. It was supposed to be an overnight 8.5 hour - 4200 mile flight on British Air from Nairobi - London, with a four-hour layover going on to JFK. But, it turned into a 22-hour 7,800 mile trip. Of that we were off the craft 1.5 - 2 hours!
On takeoff one of the engines failed. We circled over Uganda while dumping fuel so we could return and wait for a replacement engine. However, they decided to fly over 3.5 hours to Johannesburg where the flight originated from. We flew all night arriving at daybreak. We had to stay on board while the engine was replaced.
We flew another 3.5 hours back to Nairobi arriving about 11 hours after we left. They let us off for about 1.5 hours while they refuled, cleaned and replenished the aircraft. Liquor was free for all for the rest of the trip.
Leaving Nairobi we could only carry a partial fuel load due to it being a mile-high and leaving in daylight. This meant we had to fly to Rome to refuel where we had to remain onboard.
But more adventure to come: We had already missed our JFK connection. After leaving Rome and making our descent into London about 10 pm, the Captain announced at midnight the UK air controllers were going on strike! After what all the pax had gone through over the last 22 hours they were ready to mutiny to put it mildly.
Brit Air did a great PR job out of it after landing. They paid for all my long distance calls since we had plans in the U.S. Due to the strike and missed connections, we got a bonanza out of it. They paid for several days hotel and meals which gave us a chance to tour London.
I guess Travis feared a Free Fall in Crimson.
LOL very good.
“Brit Air did a great PR job out of it after landing.”
Ah, yes! British Airways has been a favorite of mine. They are friendly and accomodating. I worked for a US company in Northern Ireland for 3 years about 30 years ago. I sent one of my engineers to South Africa on a technical problem. On the way down, the BA 747 had an engine failure and the plane landed in Nairobi to await a replacement engine. After the engine was replaced the failed engine was strapped to the wing of the 747 and the plane continued on to Johannesburg...this was necessary because Nairobi did not have the maintenance available to service the engine.
A couple years after my stint in Ireland I went back for the Christmas Holidays, flying from Omaha to Chicago to London to Belfast. The Omaha-Chicago leg was on United and weather in Omaha delayed us and as we were taxiing into the termanal I saw the BA flight I was supposed to be on leaving. United didn’t want to know me...not at all helpful or accomodating. BA, on the other hand, was their ususal good self. They got me on an Air France flight to Paris (it had been delayed for a mechanical problem), then on a BA shuttle from Charley de Gaulle to Heathrow. It was too late for the connecting flight to Belfast and again, BA was accomodating...put me up in a nice hotel that night. I asked if there would be a cost to me for the hotel, and the BA agent said, ‘Of course not, we will just charge it all back to United. :)
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