Experience of Emergency measures

[Ekulgreen]

Most I've had has been a couple of go arounds, a weather diversion and many altitude changes due to turbulence. No mask deployments or slides.

Had a couple of departures from NRT through the edges of typhoons.

Yes I’ve have a few go arounds in NRT the winds there can be strong. Had my nephew with me one time scared him half to death.

 

[Pushka]

Experienced a bomb threat in the early 80's, and a couple of go arounds, but other than that nothing major - thank goodness

Isn’t that about the time IRA were actively doing this?

 

[zig]

Isn’t that about the time IRA were actively doing this?

Yes, they were. Not sure if any group claimed responsibility for the threat at the time, it was a flight from KUL - LHR.

 

[FlyboyAl]

I've had 2 or 3 go-rounds and 1 aborted take off, but the best was years ago!
MEL-HBA on TAA in either a 727 or DC9 (don't remember which).
We had been served our meals and the trolleys were out for tea/coffee.
Just south of Launceston we hit a hole in the air, and DOWN we went.
I will never forget the weightless feeling in my arms floating up beside me - yes, I (fortunately) had my belt on.
The other image, which I can still see is the look of horror on the flight attendant who was spreadeagled on the ceiling of the aircraft!!!!!! Plus cough everywhere - meals, drinks, you name it. There were also several passengers thrown out of their seats (I wonder why?)
There were lots of screams and lots of terrified passengers.
When we hit the bottom of the "hole" everything came down - including the flight attendant who ended up with a broken collar bone, and other injuries.
The plane was a disaster scene inside and there were a number of injuries which were looked after when we were met with ambulances on arrival at Hobart.
In all honesty, I don't remember any announcements over the PA, but there may have been some - I was 15 or 16 at the time and actually found it quite exciting.
The one thing it taught me was to always keep the seat belt on, no matter what!

 

[Milboo]

My heart in the mouth moment was in a 5 seater Cessna (206) taking off from the island where my parents lived. It was sufficiently windy that their airstrip was not able to be used, so we went to the top of the island. These are grass runways. Me, the pilot and another on board.

Took off and a bit bouncy. Within a minute after take off we fly over the edge of the island. There is a strong up current of wind coming in from sea, going up the cliff faces and right into our flight path.

The nose of the plane was pushed up sharply and it honest felt like we would be flipped backwards.

Thankfully the flight after this was only 15 mins back to mainland. Pilot later admitted to my father that it was the scariest moment he’d certainly had in his flying career.

Then there was the time I was beside the pilot when we landed on my parent’s grass strip - 3 seater Cessna this time. There had been heavy rain overnight and as we landed and were taxiing, we bogged and tipped forwards, narrowly missing damaging the propeller. My mother, me and the pilot then had to unload the plane (groceries, luggage etc) and push it out of the mud so he could head back and pick up the rest of the family for the next trip!

 

[Mattg]

I remember one report on AFF of an AFFer having to use the slides-and posted pics so it really happened!

Here is the thread - Evacuation FR8841

I also recall reading a post in 2013 by somebody on a QF flight from BNE-TSV that had a pressurisation problem and had to make a rapid descent & landing in ROK. Here's the post - QF974 has squawked 7700

 

[Pushka]

I've had 2 or 3 go-rounds and 1 aborted take off, but the best was years ago!
MEL-HBA on TAA in either a 727 or DC9 (don't remember which).
We had been served our meals and the trolleys were out for tea/coffee.
Just south of Launceston we hit a hole in the air, and DOWN we went.
I will never forget the weightless feeling in my arms floating up beside me - yes, I (fortunately) had my belt on.
The other image, which I can still see is the look of horror on the flight attendant who was spreadeagled on the ceiling of the aircraft!!!!!! Plus cough everywhere - meals, drinks, you name it. There were also several passengers thrown out of their seats (I wonder why?)
There were lots of screams and lots of terrified passengers.
When we hit the bottom of the "hole" everything came down - including the flight attendant who ended up with a broken collar bone, and other injuries.
The plane was a disaster scene inside and there were a number of injuries which were looked after when we were met with ambulances on arrival at Hobart.
In all honesty, I don't remember any announcements over the PA, but there may have been some - I was 15 or 16 at the time and actually found it quite exciting.
The one thing it taught me was to always keep the seat belt on, no matter what!

Wow, that’s really scary.

 

[straitman]

2. Emergency landing in an AS350B after a tail rotor chip alert.

@straitman can probably explain better than me but the main concern was the possibility of losing the tail rotor as a counter to the main rotor. That would have been bad.

The QRH/ memory item called for “in the event of a TRGB chip light: Land as soon as practicable.”

Naturally there were trees and hills everywhere.

Also, the pilot wasn’t confident of maintaining control in a hover. So he wanted a runway, or something like a runway.

Eventually we got down to around 10 feet and approx 60 knots then dropped it straight down for for a running landing. Just like this:

I'll answer this in bits and pieces which is probably the best way to do so.

Firstly there was mention of a Robinson R22. I did a whole 35 min in one once with a CASA examiner who was paranoid about it. Suffice to say that at the end of the 35 min I was paranoid also. ---- Did I mention they have wooden rotor blades?

Chip detectors. Many/most aircraft, and lots of other machinery, have chip detectors. These are electro magnetic plugs that attract any metal in the oil system. The older type have no electronics and are manually checked every so many hours of operation. Newer, more sophisticated types are just like any other warning or caution light in an aircraft and illuminate when they detect the abnormal. In this case when they detect a metal flake in the oil.

Aircraft emergency checklists have various levels of importance.

1. Land Immediately
2. Land as soon as possible and
3. Land as soon as practicable.

A chip light is a land as soon as practicable item which to me is find a suitable landing location, land and get it checked out. I wouldn't stuff around and go looking for a runway as probability says it will not likely be anything more than a stray slither in the oil. Looking at it from an alternate perspective is if it is a real problem the extra time taken to find an airfield means you are getting closer to a failure. It's all a case of balancing the actions and not being in a hovering situation for longer than necessary. Most helicopters fly OK in forward flight without a functional tail rotor. In the RAAF we actually practiced tail rotor loss landings by fixing the tail rotor pedals in a fixed location. It's actually quite easy with practice and I managed to teach an F-111 pilot how to do it once.

Just to clarify the aircraft emergencies are a rarity and that the crews are all very well trained to handle them. In 40 years of professional flying I had one engine failure in twin engine helicopter (S76C) and one tail rotor gearbox warning that was substantiated and later found to be a maintenance error. One hydraulic failure, a host of spurious chip lights a heating/pressurisation failure in a Macchi jet and a Carbon Monoxide issue in a CT4A.

Not much really

 

[love_the_life]

Not me, but I knew a woman who was on the flight where all four engines failed because of volcanic ash over Indonesia. This was back in the 80s maybe? Anyway, she steadfastly refused to fly after that experience.

 

[love_the_life]

And my cousin had a problem in his small plane when his pet camel had wandered onto his home landing strip and wouldn’t move, even with repeated buzzing.

 

[Pushka]

I was on the same Qantas A380 the week before it lost its engine on a trip to the USA. That’s close enough for me. The subsequent removal of all 380s the next week when coming home created a huge backwash in the US trying to get everyone home again. We were ok, we were on a flight from NY but on arrival in LA the announcement was for people flying to Sydney to go to their gates but for Melbourne bound folks to attend a different place. None of those people ended up on a plane for a few days. On the interconnecting bus Int to Dom in Sydney we heard lots of stories with people booked in J just happy to get a seat in Y for the long flight because they’d been told otherwise they just didn’t know when they’d get a seat.

 

[kookaburra75]

Well you are certainly welcome to that! I have a definite fear of helicopters - my wife flew over Niagara Falls without me - so I would have been very panicky until the landing.

All of my scheduled flights have been relatively quiet, just the few bumpy flights where I had to keep a coaster on top of my drink to stop it splashing, and a couple of landings in gusty conditions, when as a pilot I kept thinking "...flare, damn you...".

My track record in helicopters has been a bit mixed. Just a one ditching into the North Sea at night when heading back from the rigs to Aberdeen. We did what we were trained to do, got out, inflated suits and bobbed around for 20 minutes until we got picked up by the rescue boats from the rig and then taken back there, to be on a another helicopter the next morning. And being dry, we didn't get the chance for a stiff drink.

But then if you want to think about emergencies, then anyone on BA9 tops the list, especially for the Captain's announcement.

 

[Himeno]

I was on the same Qantas A380 the week before it lost its engine on a trip to the USA. That’s close enough for me. The subsequent removal of all 380s the next week when coming home created a huge backwash in the US trying to get everyone home again. We were ok, we were on a flight from NY but on arrival in LA the announcement was for people flying to Sydney to go to their gates but for Melbourne bound folks to attend a different place. None of those people ended up on a plane for a few days. On the interconnecting bus Int to Dom in Sydney we heard lots of stories with people booked in J just happy to get a seat in Y for the long flight because they’d been told otherwise they just didn’t know when they’d get a seat.

I was on VH-OQA not long after it returned to service. On the same route the incident happened.

 

[mannej]

Not me, but I knew a woman who was on the flight where all four engines failed because of volcanic ash over Indonesia. This was back in the 80s maybe? Anyway, she steadfastly refused to fly after that experience.

That was BA9, there is an ACI episode floating around somewhere on that flight.

Mine are fairly mundane. Coming into SIN on a QF 332 we were probably about 90 seconds from landing where the plane suddenly dipped to one side quite dramatically. Nothing was said over the PA and we landed fairly shortly afterwards. That was quite scary. I remember asking the Ask the Pilot thread and fairly sure I got told that was an upset due to the wake turbulence.

I also flew on QPA early in 2009, which must have been just after it returned to service after the QF72 accident. Wouldn’t have known any different if I didn’t check the rego plate after the flight.

 

[OATEK]

My first scary moment was on a DC10 at Denver. It was snowing and blowing, and we sat on the plane at the gate for close to an hour. Then we went out to take off and as we lifted got hit by a gust that threw the plane down to the right with the wings coming perilously close to clipping the runway. As we got a bit higher the pilot came on to say sorry for the rough takeoff, and that we had been held waiting for pax from a flight from Vegas that found it to torrid to land and eventually diverted. I assumed it was a much smaller plane as if it was to rough for them, but not for us to takeoff.

Was on AF from CDG to VIE a few years back, when one of those arctic storms was blowing in. We bounced around in our A320 like crazy - never had a rougher approach.

As regards the Camel above, I remember being in a two-seater Rockwell coming in to Condobolin, when the airport was unmanned and there were cows grazing beside the runway. A low level fly past worked for them.

 

[straitman]

I was on the same Qantas A380 the week before it lost its engine on a trip to the USA. That’s close enough for me. The subsequent removal of all 380s the next week when coming home created a huge backwash in the US trying to get everyone home again. We were ok, we were on a flight from NY but on arrival in LA the announcement was for people flying to Sydney to go to their gates but for Melbourne bound folks to attend a different place. None of those people ended up on a plane for a few days. On the interconnecting bus Int to Dom in Sydney we heard lots of stories with people booked in J just happy to get a seat in Y for the long flight because they’d been told otherwise they just didn’t know when they’d get a seat.

Just remember that a four engined a/c with one engine shut down is in a much better place than a twin with one shut down.
Also a four engined a/c with two engines shut down is always going to be in a better situation than a twin with two shut down!

 

[Happy Trails]

My heart in the mouth moment was in a helicopter departing Onslow.

We were just crossing the coast and would have been only a few hundred feet up when it banked and turned sharply while descending rapidly.

Turned out it was just the pilot trying to get a closer look at some nude sunbathers on the beach.

 

[love_the_life]

My first scary moment was on a DC10 at Denver. It was snowing and blowing, and we sat on the plane at the gate for close to an hour. Then we went out to take off and as we lifted got hit by a gust that threw the plane down to the right with the wings coming perilously close to clipping the runway. As we got a bit higher the pilot came on to say sorry for the rough takeoff, and that we had been held waiting for pax from a flight from Vegas that found it to torrid to land and eventually diverted. I assumed it was a much smaller plane as if it was to rough for them, but not for us to takeoff.

Was on AF from CDG to VIE a few years back, when one of those arctic storms was blowing in. We bounced around in our A320 like crazy - never had a rougher approach.

As regards the Camel above, I remember being in a two-seater Rockwell coming in to Condobolin, when the airport was unmanned and there were cows grazing beside the runway. A low level fly past worked for them.

Actually that reminded me of when we flew from Shanghai to Chongqing in the middle is a snow storm. Really rough and I envisioned a number is different news stories as it got worse. A lot of Hail Marys went down on that flight!

 

[straitman]

My heart in the mouth moment was in a helicopter departing Onslow.

We were just crossing the coast and would have been only a few hundred feet up when it banked and turned sharply while descending rapidly.

Turned out it was just the pilot trying to get a closer look at some nude sunbathers on the beach.

That reminds me of the time we came around the headland at Noosa. (low level of course)

A guy and girl were sunbathing and got caught out. He was smart and went the short run to the water. She went the long way and ran up the beach to the towels. Time enough for another complete orbit.

 

[Deleted member 29185]

I'm not sure if replying to this thread is a good idea or not (touch wood and all that), but i haven't had any serious issues ... but plenty of minor cough happen.

1. Quite a number of go-arounds and a few aborted take offs;
2. Twice returned to departure airport due to engine failures;
3. One delayed for 8 hours due to engine replacement;
4. Once delayed a bit (hour or so from memory) due to engine problem (all cowls off in front of us at OOL);
5. A number of climbs in an unpressurised Twotter causing the pilots to don their oxygen (er, where's mine guys??);
6. Air pockets a few times (hit my head on the Twotter roof once ... and that was with the seat belt on);
7. Flying into cloud (as the Bell 206's and 212's can't go over) and very quickly turning and exiting the cloud (the many hills tend to be higher than us);
8. Easily the one time that made me sit back a bit and think was when the Twotter I was on, crashed the next day killing 4 people including the pilot that I had the day before.

A question for the pilots (wrong thread I know) but I'm of the belief that the Twotters have a ceiling of 10000. We have regularly gone to 14000. Then there are some times the pilots decline to tell me the altitude, but I have noticed pax falling asleep (I haven't ... yet) but I certainly notice it hard to breath and the pilot wearing oxygen makes me wonder just how high I've gone unpressurised. Any hints??