I Had a Near Death Experience
[big]Plane in Serious Trouble[/big]
A young friend on SW asked me whether I had a near death experience, and if so, to tell him about it. So I did. But since I had to describe it anyway, I thought it might be worth sharing here. So:
Yes I have had several near death experiences, but I was unconscious for two of them so I was not aware how serious they were until I woke up in the hospital.
So I will tell you briefly about one of them. I was at a meeting in Montreal CA with others from my company which was based in Washington DC. The meeting was over and we were at the airport scheduled to take an Air Canada flight home, and there was a heavy snowstorm. My colleagues had left on a previous flight (they were small commuter planes). My plane had a mechanical problem that could not be fixed before the airport closed because conditions were so bad. Air Canada offered an alternative -- they had an empty AirBus wide body plane going to Toronto and offered to take the 40 people from the commuter flight to Toronto, put us up in a hotel, and fly us the next day to DC. We left Montreal just as the snowstorm became a blizzard, but just as the plane reached 32,000 feet the righthand engine blew up, the plane wobbled, then became silent as the other engine stopped for a minute. The pilot announced that he had shut down the left side engine for safety, that we would hear a small motor running from the belly of the plane and it was providing emergency method of operating the controls for minimum wing and tail flaps, that we had a 50% chance of making it, that he had lost most steering, that we were dropping rapidly to 10,000 feet where he would restart the remaining engine, that we could not return to Montreal because that airport did not have a two mile long runway to handle an emergency landing without brakes, that he could not use the reverse thruster from the one remaining engine because braking from only one side would cause the plane to veer off the runway and crash, that our flight was going to extend from 40 minutes to two hours because he had to take the airplane in a very long arc over the US because he could not steer so he had to line up the plane in the direction of Toronto's main runway using only the left engine.
OK, were we scared? Yes, of course. And we had two hours to think about it as the plane flew almost silently from the sound of one engine running at the slowest speed it could and keep us in the air (with the additional "thump" of the auxiliary power pump in the belly of the plane) while he maneuvered into a long arc so that he could line up with the runway. He allowed cell phones to be used. I called my wife to say good bye. My seat mate was a high official from the FBI. He could not bring himself to make a call. There was no panic or screaming. Mostly silence from the few passengers in the almost empty plane, some crying. The cabin servers got out the drink cart, alcoholic beverages free.
The end of the story? The pilot brilliantly plotted his geometry perfectly, got the plane lined up correctly on a very long runway that was lit up by almost every fire truck and emergency vehicle in Toronto waiting for us. He cut off the engine just before we touched the ground and we landed silently with a gentle bump and then coasted a long way until the plane stopped and the passengers shouted, cried and clapped.
A young friend on SW asked me whether I had a near death experience, and if so, to tell him about it. So I did. But since I had to describe it anyway, I thought it might be worth sharing here. So:
Yes I have had several near death experiences, but I was unconscious for two of them so I was not aware how serious they were until I woke up in the hospital.
So I will tell you briefly about one of them. I was at a meeting in Montreal CA with others from my company which was based in Washington DC. The meeting was over and we were at the airport scheduled to take an Air Canada flight home, and there was a heavy snowstorm. My colleagues had left on a previous flight (they were small commuter planes). My plane had a mechanical problem that could not be fixed before the airport closed because conditions were so bad. Air Canada offered an alternative -- they had an empty AirBus wide body plane going to Toronto and offered to take the 40 people from the commuter flight to Toronto, put us up in a hotel, and fly us the next day to DC. We left Montreal just as the snowstorm became a blizzard, but just as the plane reached 32,000 feet the righthand engine blew up, the plane wobbled, then became silent as the other engine stopped for a minute. The pilot announced that he had shut down the left side engine for safety, that we would hear a small motor running from the belly of the plane and it was providing emergency method of operating the controls for minimum wing and tail flaps, that we had a 50% chance of making it, that he had lost most steering, that we were dropping rapidly to 10,000 feet where he would restart the remaining engine, that we could not return to Montreal because that airport did not have a two mile long runway to handle an emergency landing without brakes, that he could not use the reverse thruster from the one remaining engine because braking from only one side would cause the plane to veer off the runway and crash, that our flight was going to extend from 40 minutes to two hours because he had to take the airplane in a very long arc over the US because he could not steer so he had to line up the plane in the direction of Toronto's main runway using only the left engine.
OK, were we scared? Yes, of course. And we had two hours to think about it as the plane flew almost silently from the sound of one engine running at the slowest speed it could and keep us in the air (with the additional "thump" of the auxiliary power pump in the belly of the plane) while he maneuvered into a long arc so that he could line up with the runway. He allowed cell phones to be used. I called my wife to say good bye. My seat mate was a high official from the FBI. He could not bring himself to make a call. There was no panic or screaming. Mostly silence from the few passengers in the almost empty plane, some crying. The cabin servers got out the drink cart, alcoholic beverages free.
The end of the story? The pilot brilliantly plotted his geometry perfectly, got the plane lined up correctly on a very long runway that was lit up by almost every fire truck and emergency vehicle in Toronto waiting for us. He cut off the engine just before we touched the ground and we landed silently with a gentle bump and then coasted a long way until the plane stopped and the passengers shouted, cried and clapped.
