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Thursday, February 16, 2006He winsOr she wins, I don't know the gender. This is from AOL's "Airplane Horror Stories" article. None of my stories beat this one (thankfully).Where there's smoke ... "About 20 years ago, on an airline serving and indigenous to Mexico, I was taking a flight back to New York from Acapulco via Mexico City. It was a twin engine jet, but I can't recall what type. As usual, I snagged a window seat just forward of the starboard side wing. About 20 minutes into the flight, the engine on the wing starts trailing flames. As you can imagine there were a lot of very scared people onboard. "The pilot must have shut the engine down or something around that point because the flames died out suddenly, but the flight got very bumpy and it seemed the plane was vibrating. Somehow we limped into Mexico City where we were greeted on the runway with emergency foam and just about every emergency vehicle that the airport must have had access to. The pilot put us down on the ground rather gracefully, and after a quick inspection they towed us to a gate. "For some reason they didn't want anyone deplaning and they kept us in the airplane for about an hour while the mechanic worked on the engine. Now, when I say worked, I mean worked. The guy tinkered with the engine for about 40 minutes, then said something to two confused-looking fellows on the ground off to the side of the wing and then started beating on the thing with a pipe wrench. Nine or ten good whacks later the whole engine tore loose and plunged to the tarmac. At this point, they decided we might be slightly delayed ... and they let us off the plane into a sealed waiting room (no food, dubious telephones). "Now we could only see the other side of the airplane -- the one away from the problem. They left us there for about three hours, telling us that a new plane was coming. Then they announced that they didn't have another plane and that this one was being repaired. As you might guess, somewhere along the line during the next seven hours when they were repairing the plane (duct tape and bailing wire is my guess), the pilots timed out and had to get some time off. So we waited another four hours for a fresh flight crew. We got home, 18 hours late, and I'll never again fly a local airline into that area of the world." ~ DocNY |
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