Anyone here been in an airline "incident"?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

They shouldn’t take all of the blame of course, as, like you say, there were a number of factors that lead to them not having enough fuel. However each of the pilots made critical errors that, IMO, showed a fundamental lack of airmanship on the day.

The first one was the First Officer using a conversion figure for the new metric system without bothering to check it was the right one. That resulted in the aircraft being loaded with half as much fuel as it should have been.

The second was the Captain failing to cross check the amount of fuel on board. Normally a cross check should be made between what the fuel gauges say and what the figure from the fuel receipt says. Because the gauges weren’t available they should have used another method of ensuring they had the fuel they thought they had. This is where they should have used the fuel dip system. It was used prior to filling up, but not afterwards. In our company we take our fuel policy very seriously because on almost every flight we plan to come home with minimum legal fuel reserves. The principals are the same for any aeroplane though.

The faulty gauges didn’t cause the problem, they were just another link in the chain of errors, ommisions, and technical faults. It is interesting to note that the same crew on the same day in an aircraft with working gauges would still have loaded the wrong amount of fuel as the fuel loading errors were entirely due to human error and inadequate training on the metric system. However they would have caught their mistake when they checked the fuel gauges.

Unfortunately the errors were made and the rest is history. Fortunately they did a really good job once the shit hit the fan and they came away unscathed.

I’m sorry Sattua but I can’t say that turbulence is never dangerous. However it is the pilots job to fly you around dangerous turbulence (most of which occurs inside severe thunderstorms.) And it is unlikely that you will ever be put in to that situation. The vast majority of turbulence is uncomfortable, sometimes extremely uncomfortable, but not dangerous.

42

I’d read the PDF and was already familiar with the event. However, I had incorrectly assumed that the fuel dips were given in kilograms and therefore a final dip prior to flight, after fuelling, would have shown the error.

I still think that you should be taking a bit more care with conversion factors particularly new ones. But you are right, it was more of a system failure than I’d originally thought.

43

My boyfriend was once on a flight that hit very bad turbulence unexpectedly. The flight attendant was in the aisle, and the plane dropped so suddenly that she flew up, banged her head on the ceiling (it was a very small plane), and hit an armrest on the way down. Fortunately, there was a doctor on the flight - according to my boyfriend, he was up out of his seat and moving toward her almost before she hit the floor. The poor woman was rather banged up, and the pilot wanted to turn around, but she insisted they continue on to Baltimore, as it wouldn’t really take much more time than going back.

Lesson here: when they say Fasten Seat Belt, they mean it! :wink:

44

Yeah, but we landed all right, and it’s not really that special. Now, when I take my new job in the truce monitoring mission in the Sinai Peninsula and the copter is taking mortar fire and we have to land in a hot LZ, then that’ll be exciting. Or I could tell you about the time we had to dump our fuel while circling because of a mechanical fault, that was more exciting. Watching your fuel spray out and mentally calulating your glide angle, now that’ll pucker your bunghole, me lad.

All kidding aside, Jim, most commercial flights are safer than driving. Might I recommend that you look into relaxation breathing exercises or visit your friendly neighborhood physician for a one-off prescription?

45

Um… errr… are you sure it will help?

OK - I was on a flight that, on take-off hit something or sucked a seagull into an engine or something. Yanked the whole airplane to the right. The guy across the aisle started up about flames and smoke and pieces falling off the engine. It was, to say the least, dramatic. Yeah, I was scared. Well, to make a 40 minute story short, the pilot shut down the affected engine, the various smoke and fire effects stopped, and we continued on to Chicago. We were low and it took longer and the fire trucks followed up from touchdown to parking, but no one got hurt.

I’ve also been aboard airliners that did go-arounds due to things like wayward trucks on the runway and what not, and got shook up by turbulence. So far, no damage whatsoever.

I guess the take-away message here is that even when things go wrong airliners and the highly trained people who fly them can almost always deal with the emergency. It takes a LOT to knock one out of the sky. Can I point you to the two recent incidents where airliners had problem with their front landing gear? Sure, lots of sparks and stuff but absolutely no one got hurt, a safe resolution to the whole problem. Last December, an airplane slid off a runway at Chicago’s Midway airport, crashed through two fences, and wound up in the middle of city street - no one on the airplane got hurt (someone on the ground did, unfortunately, proving once again driving is not as safe as flying, I suppose).

If you want more fun I can relate all the crazy stuff that’s happened when I’ve been at the controls of an airplane - still no one hurt and nothing broke. Flying is not as dangerous as most people think it is. Still pretty exciting at times!

You know, to the best of my knowledge there are NO Dopers who have died in a commercial airplane accident. Or even a general aviation one.

Unless stuff was richoceting between floor and ceiling, it was an instrumentation bug and no, it didn’t matter. Trust me, if the airplane was bombing up and down 12k feet like that you’d notice, even without looking at a TV screen.

46

Well, that’s not totally irrational. I firmly believe part of the problem is that people don’t know much about aviation, so they have no frame of reference for what is and isn’t normal and what is and isn’t safe. For a good slice of the population, that results in them assuming the worst the whole time. For those folks (and you, if you may be one of them) education in aviation works wonders in calming their anxiety.

Let’s see… in airplanes, moving faster is usually safer, believe it or not. (Up to a point) the faster the airplane goes the more effective the controls are. In other words, the faster you go the better the steering. An very stretched analogy would be in bicycles - it’s very, very difficult to balance upright on a bicycle that isn’t moving, but very little effort to balance one that is moving.

IF you are ever on a commercial passenger airplane and you are subjected to g forces anything like what you get on a roller coaster - that is, you really can’t breathe - you actually do have some reason to freak - that’s not normal. The pilot would only do it for a damn good reason. When normal, wing-level flight resumes, however, you may assume that the emergency is over and has been dealt with. It’s like swerving to avoid an accident on the freeway - once the swerve is done the excitement is over. Take a few deep breaths and calm down. Now, the turns sure can look extreme when you’re close to the ground, but that’s only because you’re not used to judging these things.

Well, no, I can’t say that - but the odds of you getting into that kind of turbulence is very, very, very, very small. Between satellites and weather radar and in-flight pilot reports, airliners can avoid the worst of turbulence virtually all of the time. You might get jostled around, but really those airplanes are very strong and can take a great deal of punishment. Probably more than the people inside can stand. It’s NOT going to fall apart.

One way you can protect yourself is to keep your seatbelt on (except, of course, if you must get up and pee). If you’re in your seat, have the belt on. That way, if you do hit a sizable bump you’ll stay in your seat and won’t whack anything, which is how people get hurt in turbulence.

If all else fails - do see a doctor for something to calm your nerves. It’s much better than self-medicating with alcohol.

47

(bolding mine) :eek:

I love this thread! I generally like flying, but at times can get nervous. After reading these stories, now I feel that the engine can blow up and the landing gear fall off and I’ll still be thinking “well, chances are we’ll still land all right.”

One thing that helps me in a weird way is that once the aircraft closes the door and starts its taxi, I think to myself: “whatever happens, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it, so you might as well relax.” And, oddly enough, I do. Stressing yourself into a heart attack accomplishes nothing whatsoever.

48

I’ve flown in commercial fixed-wing aircraft probably about 200 times since 1973, and in helicopters about 60 times or so. In all those flights, I’ve never encountered an incident aboard any of the choppers. Aboard fixed-wing flights, I’ve experienced the following:

  1. Two go-arounds (one coming into Paris Orly, one, er, Newark, I think)

  2. One aborted takeoff (Santa Barbara)

  3. One diversion (to Lisbon, Portugal on a TAAG Angolan flight from Paris to Luanda; must not have been much of an emergency as it took almost four hours to reach Lisbon from the point where we turned around)

  4. One in-flight incident (Santa Barbara-LA), in which the seal on the cabin door of a small twin-engine turboprop failed in flight; noisy but no particular problem.

The only flying incident that ever really bugged me was not one of these but in fact involved a USAir flight from Detroit to Philadelphia in an early-model 737. I had a window with a clear view of the right engine and as the pilot spooled up the engines for takeoff, I noticed a flood of what seemed like lube oil leaking out from under an access hatch. After we got into the air I rang the flight attendant and tried to show her what I’d seen but by that time the airpeed was sufficient to have wiped all the oil, or whatever it was, off the engine nacelle. She nevertheless brought one of the cockpit crew back to have a look. He basically shrugged his shoulders and said it was no problem. I guess it wasn’t since we made it to out destination intact, although after we set down and had slowed to taxi speed I could once again see large amounts of the oil-like substance spewing out from under the hatch.

49

Oh yeah, forgot one: got about twenty minutes into an Air Tran flight from Atlanta to Houston Hobby when the pilot announced we were turning back due to unspecified technical issues. Ended up having to overnight there as whatever it was could not be resolved quickly.

50

I used to be carefree flyer until we took off in a terrible snowstorm and the plane was really bounced about. After that, I was really afraid to fly. I tried all the mental tricks I knew, including visualizing myself going to the airport, getting on board, taking off, breathing though the anxiety. I also read all the safety stats to convince myself it was really safe.

Know what got me on the plane? I accepted that air travel does have risks and I don’t need to convince myself otherwise. HOWEVER, it is an acceptable risk, like driving or eating supermarket sushi. I decided it was OK to be afraid, I allowed myself to be afraid but just kept reminding myself that I do lots of mundane things that involve acceptable risk.
An OJ and vodka before taking off helped too. (Although I won’t take knockout pills or drink heavily- I need to help my family and myself if anything does go wrong. A little vodka and OJ takes teh edges off.)

Headphones- blocking out the sounds of the plane helps me too.

51

Flying is an unnatural exercise and apprehension is to be expected. Rolling along on the ground is something we are accustomed to but being off the ground is novel. I’m just not sure that reliving narrow, or not so narrow, escapes from serious, or not so serious, situations is the way to go.

At one time I relived things and sweated over what might have happened to make things turn out otherwise. However, I haven’t done that for years because the fact is nothing did happen. Why should I play hypthetical horror movies to myself? And so I quit.

Grit your teeth, get on the plane and the probabilities are overwhelment that nothing whatever will happen and you will arrive at your destination in better shape than had you driven an automobile.

No one should tell you that turbulence can’t be dangerous. If it happens close to the ground at exactly the wrong time sure, bad things can happen. We have learned a lot about turbulence and how to recognize it and there hasn’t been such an incident for many years. I don’t think it any more likely that such an incident will occur on any given trip than that an 18-wheeler will blow a front tire as it is coming at you at just the right, or maybe it’s wrong, time on a two lane road. I don’t worry much about the latter and I think worry about the former is only bad because it is compounded by the unnatural experience of being up in the air.

52

Was there a little man on the wing ripping the engine apart? Were you sitting next a very young William Shatner?

:slight_smile:

Classic Twilight Zone, bien sur

53

A horrible, hairy little man who would scare you even if he weren’t ripping into the engine nacelle.

54

I think I sat next to him on my last flight… (shudder) :wink:

55

Well, one can always look at it the way Darth Vader’s Little Pal mentioned - all of these stories can be summarized as “a bad thing happened and the ride was very bumpy/we were late getting to our destination/it was rather frightening.” Honestly, the most extreme and scary of the stories, in terms of what actually happened to the passengers, just involve people being exposed to some of the plane’s safety features directly instead of via the little card in the seat pocket.

Wish I’d gotten to go on the slide. :frowning:

56

Speaking of terrible things. Back when smoking was allowed if there was a man smoking a cigar and a woman with four kids, one with a diaper needed changing, I just knew they were going to sit next to me.

OK, I’ll shut up now. This threat is for helpful things.