Posted on 12/04/2012 7:54:30 PM PST by Red Steel
A new Boeing 787 Dreamliner flown by United Airlines was diverted in midflight to New Orleans on Tuesday because of concern about a possible mechanical problem.
The plane was headed to Newark from Houston when it descended over a 10-minute span to 31,000 feet from 41,000 feet and slowed to 480 miles an hour from 655, according to FlightAware.com, a data provider.
The plane, which carried 174 passengers and 10 crew members, then rapidly recovered its speed and turned sharply to the south over Mississippi, according to the Web sites flight log.
After the incident, United, the first North American carrier to fly the new planes, was examining one of the jets generators, units that provide electrical power to the planes engines, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
(Long B4 the TSA and when OJ wuz gud to be jumpin' the ropes.)
Well, with the United Airlines on time performance around 70%, the passengers should have been grateful for an early landing!
The idea that the NYT is using flightaware to report this is hilarious. Surfing the web is a substitute for journalism now.
Yeah, I was wondering where they got that one. The "old gray lady" must be losing it.
The aircraft exceeded maximum operating speed while on autopilot that’s why they descended and diverted.
Normal cruise for the 787 is M85, MAXIMUM cruise speed is M89.
I’m an en route air traffic controller in New York.
have a flight attendant in the family. she figures about 85-90% of the male attendants are gay.
I worked with an ex-fighter pilot in the early ‘90s (he was a litigation specialist with the oil company we worked for) and I asked him why he didn’t become an airline pilot after he got out of the service. He said he didn’t want to be a bus driver...
I thought ZAU was Chicago ARTCC? : )
LOL call me Znyber then if u want
I never minded the flight in a 727.
From 1972, fly Cheryl:
According to this link, Mach 1 at 41,000 feet is 660 mph. So, M89 would be 587 mph. According to FlightAware at 9:38 am, Flight 1146 was doing 655 mph at 41,000.
In today’s politically correct society the new ad would have stated “Hump Bill.”
Which come as no surprise to anyone who has flown much.
Given the current populations most highly represented in the cabin crew, the light-in-the-loafers crowd and the getting-longer-in-the-tooth/over-the-hill-gang, I certainly hope the flight deck crew is more discerning. This ain't your dad's airline experience from the 60s, ya know...
But they were flying West to East so they had a tail wind. Flightaware's listed speed is ground speed not air speed.
I once flew a 747 to Amsterdam at 755 MPH ground and asked the flight attendant if the pilot knew we were 'Flying Mach +'. She looked up at the flight chart and went and asked the pilot.
She returned with the answer, "according to the pilot we have a 170 mph tail wind which is added to the air speed to get your ground speed".
Was the figure air speed or ground speed? It was flying west to east, so couldn't there be a jet-stream pickup in the ground speed?
. . . and if the plane can be used again, it was a great landing!
re: “hairy”...
my father in law had to do that in the Hillcrest region of San Diego many years ago when a private pilot had a heart attack (final assumption) and brought down an airliner.
He still won’t talk about it.
Ah. That makes sense.
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