Another plane is reported missing in Asia and I have a feeling this one or parts of it may be found. On a flight from Surabaya to Singapore, the Airbus A320 lost communications with the tower after it deviated from its submitted flight plan because of weather issues. Normally, one of three things bring an airliner down; weather, pilot error or mechanical issues. In this case, probably weather will be the culprit, "if" it is indeed down. There have also been accidents where a combination of things go wrong. Sometimes pilots will try to correct a mechanical problem only to actually make things worse. They use their skills and training, but occasionally, as we have learned from flying in the simulator, the plane does not behave as pilots predict it will or the way the plane is designed to, which in turn confuses pilots and they make changes according to the instruments and the instruments are wrong.
I had one bad (really scary) incident in my 32 years of flying. We were flying from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco in a Boeing 767-200. We pushed back and while taxing out to our runway for takeoff, we were finishing our checklist, including running the engines up to to full throttle and hold them for 5 seconds. Now, we are number two for t/o. We waited the three minutes to make sure we would not encounter any wake turbulence from the previous plane that took off in front of us and then the ATC (Air Traffic Controller) gave us permission to t/o. We begin our takeoff roll down the runway to reach our t/o speed of 190. The FO (First Officer) is calling out our speed, "150, 160, 170, 180, 190, V1, rotate" and I pull back on the yoke and we are beginning our climb when at 2000 feet, I hear the ATC tell me to climb to one-three thousand and level off. Maintain speed at 2-5-0. Just as a I get above 2500, in the cockpit, we hear a loud bang. We looked at the instruments and see that we have lost power in the right engine and we smell smoke coming in through the a/c ducts. We extinguish the engine and shut it down along with the fuel supply. That engine now cannot be restarted. I have 225 passengers on-board of 375,000 pounds of aircraft. We immediately declared an emergency and tell the ATC that we need to return.
Needless to say, all ended well, but it was the scariest moment of my aviation career. I learned one thing that day in particular. I was more worried for the passengers than I was for myself. I kept thinking to myself, "I have to get these people down safely." I told the psychiatrist that, (yes, pilots have to go see a shrink before the FAA lets them back in the cockpit after an accident or other stressful situation), and he said that being worried more for the passengers is a common mindset that most pilots experience when in times of distress. I found that to be very interesting.
I wanted to share this story with everyone.
I had one bad (really scary) incident in my 32 years of flying. We were flying from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco in a Boeing 767-200. We pushed back and while taxing out to our runway for takeoff, we were finishing our checklist, including running the engines up to to full throttle and hold them for 5 seconds. Now, we are number two for t/o. We waited the three minutes to make sure we would not encounter any wake turbulence from the previous plane that took off in front of us and then the ATC (Air Traffic Controller) gave us permission to t/o. We begin our takeoff roll down the runway to reach our t/o speed of 190. The FO (First Officer) is calling out our speed, "150, 160, 170, 180, 190, V1, rotate" and I pull back on the yoke and we are beginning our climb when at 2000 feet, I hear the ATC tell me to climb to one-three thousand and level off. Maintain speed at 2-5-0. Just as a I get above 2500, in the cockpit, we hear a loud bang. We looked at the instruments and see that we have lost power in the right engine and we smell smoke coming in through the a/c ducts. We extinguish the engine and shut it down along with the fuel supply. That engine now cannot be restarted. I have 225 passengers on-board of 375,000 pounds of aircraft. We immediately declared an emergency and tell the ATC that we need to return.
Needless to say, all ended well, but it was the scariest moment of my aviation career. I learned one thing that day in particular. I was more worried for the passengers than I was for myself. I kept thinking to myself, "I have to get these people down safely." I told the psychiatrist that, (yes, pilots have to go see a shrink before the FAA lets them back in the cockpit after an accident or other stressful situation), and he said that being worried more for the passengers is a common mindset that most pilots experience when in times of distress. I found that to be very interesting.
I wanted to share this story with everyone.
