Jaunted

Emergency Landings / Airline News / Qantas / 767 / Australia Travel / Airplane Hell / Mt. Isa / ISA / → All Tags

Emergency Landing Forces Qantas Passengers to Deplane Via Forklift

From time to time planes are forced into emergency landings. Sometimes the reasons are real emergencies, like a bird strike or cracked windshield. Sometimes the reasons are still real, but are only a smell of smoke in the cabin or an unruly passenger. In all cases, the crew make the executive decision to bring the bird down in the interest of safety. In many cases, the problem is detected, rectified and the passengers are on their way with a bit of a delay. They'll be a little late, but no major dramas ensue.

Over the weekend, a Qantas aircraft had such an emergency where the crew smelled smoke on board. Naturally, alarms were raised and the captain decided to divert to an alternate airport. The Boeing 767, en route from Darwin to Brisbane, safely landed in the small outback town of Mt. Isa.

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Emergency Landings / Airlines / Airline News / Jetstar / In-flight Meals / Travel Hell / Airline Food / → All Tags

An In-Flight Meal Proves Deadly for One Jetstar Passenger

We’re always quick to criticize in-flight meals as hazardous to your health due to their taste, but a recent dinner aboard a Jetstar flight was actually deadly for one unlucky passenger.

During a flight from Singapore to Auckland, a passenger—Robert Rippingale—choked on his in-flight meal only an hour or two into the 11-hour journey. He was sitting next to his girlfriend, who initially thought he was just laughing, but soon the scene turned very serious.

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Ryanair Handles Mid-Flight Passenger Heart Attack Exactly How You Imagine

Any time Ryanair spokespeople begin to talk about following EU airline regulations—and by "following EU airline regulations" they mean "doing the absolute minimum as required by law"—you know that something has gone wildly awry.

Last time we saw them being defensive like this was last year, after they stranded Canary Island-bound passengers on the entirely wrong island in the midst of a thunderstorm. The airline's excuse? That according to EU regulations they were, in terms of physical distance, close enough.

So with Ryanair spokesperson Stephen McNamara telling a Swedish newspaper that flight attendants handled a medical situation according to EU requirements, you know that the story is going to be good. And by good we mean very, awesomely bad.

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Cuba Libres All Around! United Flight Makes Surprise Stop in Havana

Too bad the United passengers missed this action

Weird smells. In-flight drama. An emergency landing in Cuba. These three elements sound like the basis for a Weekend At Bernie's-sort of movie, but instead it was reality for 135 passengers onboard United Flight 931 this weekend, when their Washington-Dulles to Cancun, Mexico trip took a detour—to Havana, Cuba.

The cause of the unscheduled stop? CNN reports: "The crew detected a burning smell, saying it was in the cockpit," and they landed the Airbus A320 on Castro's turf just to be safe.

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Get A First Person Look at Last Week's Delta Emergency Landing

Some Delta passengers had something to be thankful for this holiday season as 2010 ended, as their flight had to make an emergency landing in Colorado Springs last Thursday. Obviously any landing that isn’t on the scheduled runway at the scheduled time is an emergency one, but this detour was pretty calm and orderly.

Pilots noticed a light indicating that one of their engines was probably not working like it was supposed to, so they made the decision to land in Colorado instead of Arizona. However, once safely on the ground the overheated brakes created a fire danger, so the call was made for all passengers to Steven Slater their way out of the plane and onto the runway.

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Speedos and Mesh Underwear: The Busiest Travel Weekend Was Also Skimpiest

As expected with one of the busiest travel periods of the year, much travel news happened over the long Thanksgiving weekend. Luckily for everyone, the headlines focused on occurrences of nudity at airports or the lack of, as the TSA declared victoy in Opt-Out Day, even though they had turned off most of the controversial full-body scanners. There were no underwear bombs or package bombs; there were only Jaeger bombs at family tables stewn with pumpkin pie crumbs.

Alas, before getting back on track after a gluttonous weekend, let's pig out once more...on the brief news bits from the last few days:

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What Is 'Snarge' and Why You Don't Want It On Your Flight

Up until today, our vocabulary remained free of the word "Snarge", but now that we know what it means, we are totally going to find ways to use it. This icky-sounding term is pretty damn icky for sure; it's what bird remains are called, but not just any bird remains; it's the leftovers of birds found in the engines of airliners that suffer bird strikes.

Even before "The Miracle on the Hudson" hit the water after bird strikes took out its engines, the danger of flocks living around New York City's airports was well documented. Now the issue is back, after the pilot of yesterday's Delta Flight 30, which blew an engine after taking off from JFK bound for Moscow, claims that a bird strike caused the failure. Notable extra fact: the flights had Leonardo DiCaprio onboard! As of now, no "snarge" has been found in the engine, but the NTSB isn't ruling out the possibility, although it's probably just that a compressor stalled and the engine malfunctioned.

[Photo of a different bird strike engine: AP/WSJ]

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Emergency Landing at JFK Filmed from Inside the Plane

There is a popular saying that "the future will be blogged." Well, forget that. The future will be completely caught on smartphone video, such as with the emergency landing of a Delta Connection (operated by Atlantic Southeast Airlines) jet last night after some of the landing gear failed to deploy. Flight 4951 from Atlanta, Georgia to White Plains, NY made the landing at New York's JFK Airport after the pilot radioed in the issue, and luckily the worst thing that happened was the airplane got a little scratched up.

Two passengers managed to keep their phone cameras rolling while bracing for impact, as the flight attendant repeated a command to "stay down." The regional jet landed on the runway, with the pilot balancing the plane on the remaining landing gear until the final moments, when gravity took over and the wing hit the ground, shooting a trail of sparks, which you can see in the video. All passengers and crew were unharmed and were even able to leave the plane normally, albeit onto the tarmac.

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It's JetBlue Passengers' Turn to Ride the Inflatable Slide after Fire Breaks Out

What a month it's been for JetBlue, huh? First, there was flight attendant Steven Slater who quit his job by exiting down a plane's evacuation slide, then the airline bounced back by releasing their All You Can Jet pass, and yet now we're back to the evacuation slide business.

It was just announced over the news that a JetBlue Airbus A320 experienced a "hard landing" at Sacramento Airport after flying in from Long Beach. The landing caused two blown tires and a small fire broke out on board, which was quickly extinguished. All 87 passengers and 5 crew members are safe, after leaving the plane via the emergency exits, which means they got to ride the slides!

Yes, this was a scary event for the passengers, as quick as it was, and we're not making too light of it. But the fact still remains that if TIME Magazine named a person of the month and not just of the year, August's wouldn't be a person. It'd be a thing: the inflatable evacuation slide.

Bird Strikes / Alaska Airlines / Emergency Landings / Animals / → All Tags

Alaska Airlines Flight Hits an Eagle but Avoids Tragedy

Yesterday morning, an eagle was sucked into one of the engines of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 bound from Sitka to Seattle, causing the airplane to abort take off and its engines to automatically shut down. All 134 passengers and 5 crew onboard were unhurt, and continued to Seattle eventually, onboard a different airplane.

The Alaska flight was able to stop before reaching the end of the runway, which is fortunate since the end of the runway was water, and heaven knows we don't need another water landing.

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Alleged Shoe Bomber was Really Just Sarcastic Man Smoking on the Plane

How many times do flight attendants have to remind the flying public that flights, in the these modern times, are strictly non-smoking? And what's more is that you'd think a passenger who's taking too long in the lavatory with smoke coming out from under the door would use common sense to stop himself from joking that he's trying to light a shoe bomb. But no; everything failed horribly last night when a Qatari diplomat on a United flight between Washington-Reagan and Denver International smoked a cigarette in the restroom and then made the sarcastic comment that he was lighting up his shoes.

As expected, the comment was taken literally by the US Air Marshals on board, who wrestled the man down and restrained him through the remainder of the flight, while military jets were scrambled to see the plane to a safe landing. United flight 663, a 757 plane, did land shortly after and was held in a secure area of the airport until a search of the passenger and the plane had finished. Surprise, surprise—no explosives were found.

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What To Do In The Event of an Emergency Landing

Thanks to the heightened security threat level—Orange, thanks to the Christmas Day crotch bomber—flight crew and passengers are a little more nervous and on-alert than usual. This is apparent in the number of disruptive passengers we've had lately, causing emergency landings left and right.

But the rash of emergency landings isn't just their fault; last week a United jet had issues with its landing gear, and then there was the baby born on a Southwest flight last month. What we're trying to get at here, is that emergency landings happen occasionally and you should be prepared for them, so that you're one less person freaking out when there's no need to be.

After the jump, what to do in case of an emergency landing

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