Oh Lord.
It landed?
Not being reported on any cable channels I have surfed.
Well, lets see if there is an update:
http://www.kusa.com
Ok, here it is:
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4672273,00.html
"American Airlines plane makes emergency landing at DIA"
By Associated Press
May 3, 2006
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "The plane landed safely before 10:30 p.m., Snyder said. It was met with emergency vehicles, but there were no injuries.
Synder said the aircraft would be inspected to see if there were any problems with the nose gear or the warning light.
A message left for an American Airlines spokesman by The Associated Press was not immediately returned."
And I think this is the second emergency landing in a couple of days.
I do think that there is some serious threat and potential attack.
Note the advisories and the several tapes by the various AQ -- AQ's MOD is to warn in tapes, then attack.
But I rather have a number of false alarms, than to miss a real attack.
I was on a plane that did something like that. They announced we'd be landing in about 15 minutes or so, then went into a rather steep bank -- and stayed there. After a while it occurred to me that we were flying in circles. And, a lot more than the few minutes to landing had transpired, with no mention of anything over the PA system.
After a long wait, el kapitan comes on and announces that there's a bit of a problem. One of the wing slats is stuck, and they can't un-stick it. But, they're "working on an idea", and they are very hopeful that we will be able to land safely.
Oh, joy.
After a very long time (I forget the exact time scale, thankfully memory has been blotted of much of that terror, but as I recall, we were supposed to land early evening and ended up on ground near midnight), he says OK, here we go, we think we'll be OK.
When we got to the runway, he touched the wheels down within about a tenth of an inch of the very beginning of the pavement, and hit the thrust reversers within about a nanosecond of touchdown.
The plane went screaming down the runway, and as I looked out the window I could see stuff on the ground whizzing by (*whup* *whup* *whup* *whup*). The plane did not seem to be slowing down very much if at all.
He'd landed it at flight speed!
Although we were never given an explanation, my conclusion was that instead of unsticking the stuck slat, so that they could extend it, they withdrew the other slat, to allow level flight. However, sans slats, there was no way they could slow to landing speed without stalling.
When the plane finally slowed down enough to turn off the runway -- which was at the far end of the runway -- we saw a couple of rows of firetrucks lined up, lights flashing. Glorious Leader came back on the PA to inform us not to worry about what we'd seen, that he'd told them that we didn't need the emergency vehicles, but since they were scheduled to have the exercize then anyway (golly, what a coincidence!), they decided to deploy them.
After we landed, we were held captive on the plane for several more hours. People were allowed to leave if they wanted -- but, the airport had just closed down the car rental counters. How thoughtful and considerate. When it took off again for the final leg of the flight, there was absolute silence in the passenger cabin. I still have my wife's fingernail marks in my hand from the final landing.
Fly Northwest again? NEVER!
The icing on the cake is that this occurred during one of their infamous "work slowdowns", and the takeoff was delayed by several hours while they went through the motions of pretending to find a problem (a stuck window in the kitchen!), and having to find the one person in the area "qualified" to repair it, and then another delay waiting to find the right parts, yada yada yada. Another passenger, fed up, told one of the smirking NWA clowns that he knew there was nothing wrong with the plane, that they were just abusing us because of their "work slowdown". The clowns looked at him with a real snarky smile, and silently walked off without saying a word.
So, for that BS they had all the time in the world -- but for real maintenance, well, I guess there just wasn't time to address those issues.
I used to think that Republic had established the benchmark for exactly how rude and abusive an airline could possibly be, but then, when they got absorbed into Northwest, I found out that it was just a starting point. I could go on with some of the other insane BS they've pulled, but I'm already off-topic enough. Suffice it to say that "stuff happens" that does NOT make it to "the news". I wonder how many events like this happen each year.