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We were held up on the ground in Dallas one afternoon while a mechanic made minor repairs to the airplane. The flight attendant told us that the repairs would take awhile, and rather than wait on the hot airplane, we could go back and wait in the terminal. I had a window seat and wanted to see what the mechanic was doing, so I stayed onboard and watched as the mechanic applied several strips of duct tape to the engine cowling.
The mechanic completed his work, climbed the jetway steps, and came onboard to talk to the captain. Since we were free to get out of our seats, I made my way to the front of the plane and caught the mechanic as he was finishing his report. I motioned to the roll of silver tape hanging from his tool belt and asked: “is that duct tape you were patching the plane with?” To which the mechanic replied in a Texas drawl: “no sir, that there is genuine six-hundred mile-an-hour tape.”
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Yep, the faster ya go the better it holds. It is better than duct tape. I still don't care for using it on airplanes tho.
Posts: 2208 | Registered: Feb 2004
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I find it better not to look too closely at a plane I'm getting ready to fly in, thanks. Especially after I got a close look at some of the planes they used to fly from Long Beach to Catalina Island. Looked like they were ready to fall apart. I've taken boats whenever I've gone to Catalina because of that.
Posts: 2454 | Registered: Jan 2003
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We were about to land in Dallas on a turbulent summer day when a sudden downdraft caught our 767 and slammed it into the Tarmac. We hit so hard that my tailbone hurt. The plane slowly limped to the terminal, making a ker-chunkity sound and bouncing the passengers all the way. Once I was in the terminal, I looked out the window at our plane and saw a dozen people gathered around the landing gear, examining the shredded tires.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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This could only have happened before 9/11, but one May when I was on a Canadian airlines flight from Toronto to Thunder Bay, Ontario, the pilots invited anyone on board to come up to the cockpit to ask questions or see what it looked like. Every kid on the plane went, and I wanted to go so badly, but I looked around and no grown ups were going. Finally after all the kids were done, I thought, "I'm not going to the the only kid on the plane who didn't see the cockpit" so I went on up.
The pilots were very nice. I asked them if they really knew what every one of the switches and gauges that line the entire inside of the cockpit were for, and they actually did. They told me that most of them were not things you would need unless something went wrong, and they are laid out in a way that makes sense, according to the position of the corresponding elements in the plane. Then I asked them if they ever get used to how beautiful it is up in the sky. They said "oh you think THIS is beautiful..." and proceeded to tell me of the most glorious sights they'd ever seen as pilots. They were really nice. I've found that most pilots are just like kids with these marvelous toys called airplanes, and they love to share their joy in them.
Anyway, I thanked them and went back to my seat. After a while the flight attendant came back and said the pilots had invited me to sit up front in the jumpseat while we landed, and would I be interested? I was like "oh yes!" So I got to sit up front in a little seat they folded down between the two pilots' seats. They showed me how to strap in. They have SO much better a view up there! We came in over Lake Superior which was just breaking up for the spring, and it was all huge and awesome, with black water and white chunks of ice, and black mountains peeking out from under blankets of snow, one of them called the sleeping giant, because it looks like one. I thought of Ender and his giant's drink. There was steam rising from some smokestack somewhere, and the whole scene was just primordial and ragnarokian. <laughs> To top it off, the hotel we booked into was named the Valhalla.
It was so great! I will never forget that. I waited around for my boss at the airport who was supposed to pick me up, but as he didn't show up I just took a cab to the hotel. He happened by later and asked them to page me at the desk. The pilots were just there nearby and they said, "Anne Kate? Oh yes, she was on board. She flew in the cockpit with us!" My boss said he was not in the least surprised.
[ May 15, 2004, 01:49 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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One time on the way back from Chicago, I was the only person on the little puddle-jumper flight. The pilots addressed all of the commentary to me directly, and midway the stewardess and I jumped up and down in the tail section, because she said it would make the pilots wonder why the plane wobbled. (She may have been pulling my leg, but I did it with her anyway.) She also gave great murder mystery suggestions.
But it was no way as cool as flying in the cockpit. *a little jealous Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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I don't know, jumping up and down on a plane sounds pretty unique.
Over Christmas I was on a very small plane and the stewardess actually asked certain rather overweight persons to change seat locations so that the plane would fly more evenly.
Posts: 1990 | Registered: Feb 2001
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John Wayne Airport in Orange County is one of my favorite airports for landings and takeoffs. The noise restrictions in the area necessitate a rapid descent on landing and steep climb on takeoff. In an overpowered plane like the 737, the takeoff from John Wayne seems like a rocket launch.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:Over Christmas I was on a very small plane and the stewardess actually asked certain rather overweight persons to change seat locations so that the plane would fly more evenly.
I had something similar to that happen once on a puddle-jumper. They asked some of us to move to the back to distribute our weight more evenly.
(and I am a white-knuckle flyer to begin with)
I've been told it's best to not listen to flight controllers when pilots make that channel available - it could make me even more paranoid squeebish about flying.
I flew today - on a plane one size or two up from a puddle-jumper. Short, smooth and uneventful. My definition of a good flight. Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Oh, the puddle jumpers are the most fun! Think of it as an amusement ride. The big planes don't really give you a very exciting ride for your money. Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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At risk of derailing this thread, I don't have an airplane story, but I do have a cruise ship story.
My husband, Icarus, and I were on our honeymoon cruise. Of course it was a Carnival ship - our favorite but still the most prone to disasters, it seems. Anyway, it was our last night. If you have cruised before, you know you have to put all your luggage in the corridor so that it can be taken off the ship first thing in the morning.
We had just gone to bed after a night of dancing and gambling and general partying, and suddenly his little twin bed slid about six feet away from mine and I was almost dumped on the floor. (Yes, it was our honeymoon, but THAT'S not the reason for the bed shift.) All over the ship we could hear glassware shattering, luggage rolling down the hallway, and basically everything that wasn't tied down being tossed about.
The next morning, we found out that we had narrowly missed crashing into a fishing boat running in the shipping lanes with no lights on. If it hadn't been for the quick reflexes of our captain? driver? pilot? (I doubt the captain himself was steering, but who knows?) we would have hit it. Apparently, no one was hurt.
To add to that, on my first cruise ever (again with Carnival) I was on the trip that immediately preceded the one that caught fire and was stranded at sea. That was the "Celebration". My first story was on the "Jubilee."
I'm about to sail on the "Imagination" for the second time. No incidents the first time, so we may be pushing our luck.
Anyway, I apologize if this starts a bunch of cruise ship stories, but I didn't feel this was worthy of its own thread.
Posts: 676 | Registered: Sep 2002
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I'll never fly Sabena Airlines again after a particularly bad series of flights between NYC, Heathrow, and Tel Aviv. We missed the runway completely on our landing in London, and wound up getting an overnight stay in Brussels instead of an one-hour connection when our connecting flight apparently had its wing fall off on the runway.
*shudder*
Of course, just last week, I watched as a series of United flights out of O'Hare were delayed, moved, and shuttled between terminals -- and, KNOWING that this would result in lost luggage, asked the desk to confirm that my luggage was in fact headed to the right plane. Of course, when we landed (three hours late) in Madison, my luggage -- along with the bags of half the people on the plane, apparently -- was still on the tarmac in Chicago, waiting at the original gate for a plane that would never arrive. *laugh*
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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On a flight out of Denver my ears popped six times in rapid succession shortly after takeoff. The captain put the plane into a shallow dive and then announced over the speaker that the cabin pressurization system wasn't working. We had to hurry back to the airport for a breath of fresh air.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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I've been in flight exactly one time, when I was helicoptered to a hospital in Louisville shortly after I was born. Apparently it was snowing or icy--it was December--and the copter had to put down at least once to de-ice.
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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There was the time we went to Denver. Only we were supposed to be going to NY.
About an hour into our 6-hour flight, we were told we were going to have to make a stop -- where was not initially clear -- because our landing gear had failed to retract. So we weren't going to have enough fuel to get to NY. And we were going to land -- somewhere. But since we weren't an actual emergency, apparently some airports didn't want to take us, and we had to backtrack a bit to Denver.
Airports are very quiet at 1 am. And I can say I've been to Denver!
My friend called her dad (not that it was much earlier in L.A., but we didn't have the number of who to call in NY), and he tried to call the folks from NY who were supposed to be picking us up when our flight arrived at 6:30 in Newark. No luck. When we got in a bit before 10, they'd been waiting for us for over three hours -- after waking up at about 4 am to get to the airport on time.
At least the wedding wasn't until a couple days later.
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Flying back one January from Germany to New York, the Pilot announced the following:
"As you may have heard, there has been a blizzard hitting New York. We should be the first plane to land at the cleared off runway....if they get it cleared off before we get there."
I looked down over the Atlantic ocenn and wondered, "IF?"
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Two weeks after 9-11, I was back in the air, flying to a small town in Georgia. I transferred to a puddle jumper in Atlanta for an evening flight to Albany, GA. We were sitting on the plane while the pilot did his check when I heard a scream from the cockpit. The pilot threw open the cockpit door and charged down the steps.
I looked out the window to see where the pilot had gone in such a hurry and saw that a refueling truck had come to a sudden stop, not one foot from the side of the airplane’s cockpit. Smoke was billowing from the rear tires of the truck. The pilot appeared to be quite upset as he talked to the truck’s driver.
I mentally calculated that if the truck had actually hit the cockpit, that the plane would have pivoted, throwing the propeller into the refueling tank, and possibly causing a fuel spill. I briefly considered the flash point of jet fuel, but I backed off from that thought.
As the pilot came back on the airplane, I could see that he was shaken. He left the cockpit door open, and I watched and listened as he put on his headset and contacted ground control. He said in a shaky voice: “he didn’t see us.”
The remainder of the flight was uneventful, but every time the pilot came on the speaker I could detect the shakiness in his voice. I was the last person off the plane in Albany, and I overheard the pilot say to the flight attendant: “we’re lucky to be alive.”
I always say my prayers before a flight, and I knew it wasn’t luck.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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All my best transportation stories happened on chicken buses. If you've never been on a chicken bus, you wouldn't understand. And if you have, you have probably already had all the same experiences.
Posts: 1652 | Registered: Aug 2003
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UofU: Are you talking about that bus in Romancing the Stone , the one with pigs, chickens, and people onboard?
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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I'm jealous, UofU. My coworker promised/threatened that we'd take a chickenbus in Honduras and we never did. I was very disappointed. I also love that almost all the local buses in Central America are old school buses. It amused me when I saw one from the county where I went to school.
Posts: 959 | Registered: Jan 2002
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Risuena: While some of the chicken buses are really retired school buses (and, as you saw, the original school district names can sometimes still be discerned), a lot of them are not. The funny thing is that Bluebird, the company that makes school buses, has at least one factory in Latin America, and builds the things specifically for public transportation in those countries. So they look exactly like school buses, but were never used as such.
Skillery: Yes, the Colombian bus on Romancing the Stone is an example of a chicken bus. They are ubiquitous in latin american countries, and possibly other third-world type countries as well. They don't always have chickens on them, but often enough. They are school-bus style buses, often with garish colored paintjobs added to the normal yellow, and with the seats rearranged or replaced to permit cramming more passengers in. They are often jammed so full that you can barely move, and forget getting off the bus at your stop unless you happen to already be by the door. I found it very helpful to be 1 foot or more taller than everybody else, so my hipbone didn't hit everybody else's as I pushed my way through the crowd to the door.
quote:All my best transportation stories happened on chicken buses. If you've never been on a chicken bus, you wouldn't understand. And if you have, you have probably already had all the same experiences.
I've never ridden on a chicken bus, but I've ridden Greyhound numerous times: round-trips from Iowa to Chicago, from Chicago to Arizona and from Chicago to California - and there is an interesting story to each trip.
There was a time when I was going back to my husband in Arizona. My seatmate and I had been talking for some time, and as we approached Las Vegas, he asked if it would be okay for him to feel me up. I don't think so!!!
There was a trip from Iowa to Chicago where we had a meal stop around Iowa City. When we were done eating, we couldn't get back on the bus because one of the passengers had removed all his clothes and we had to wait for state police to come take him away.
Then there is The Trip From Hell ... (more later)
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So I got to sit up front in a little seat they folded down between the two pilots' seats. They showed me how to strap in. They have SO much better a view up there! We came in over Lake Superior which was just breaking up for the spring, and it was all huge and awesome, with black water and white chunks of ice, and black mountains peeking out from under blankets of snow, one of them called the sleeping giant, because it looks like one. I thought of Ender and his giant's drink. There was steam rising from some smokestack somewhere, and the whole scene was just primordial and ragnarokian. <laughs> To top it off, the hotel we booked into was named the Valhalla.![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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