(no subject)
Today was only an eight-ish hour day (so, "normal"), but it felt twice that long.
I started in Orlando this afternoon, and all I had to do was a short Asheville turn (meaning we work there, deplane, load up, and fly right back) and then fly as a passenger back to Atlanta. Leaving Orlando was normal up until about ten minutes after we took off. We hadn't had an indication from the pilots that we were above 10,000 feet (which is when you can turn your stuff back on and the crew gets up), and then all of a sudden we leveled off - in fact, the tail came up so fast, I thought we had changed our minds and were headed back down to Orlando.
Eventually the captain called us and said, "We're having a mechanical issue; just stand by." I immediately started running through our emergency evacuation procedures. It was a little comforting; there was no fear, just a review of everything that I needed to do and that could come up (namely, that my exit would be unusable). Thank God, it never came to that. Instead, we diverted to Atlanta and simply got a new plane. When we got off the old plane, there were about six mechanics in the jet bridge, and one said, "You're lucky to be here!" Which, ugh. Don't tell me that.
The rest of the day was uneventful, though by the time we finally got to Orlando, I had to rush to my Atlanta flight and I didn't eat dinner until 10:30 - I was going to have a few minutes to grab something at the airport, but several factors took that extra time away. I'm happy to be home tonight, and I'm going to spend my on-call time at home tomorrow, which will be the first time this has happened in almost a year.
My parents had a lot of questions for me when I got home, and it got me thinking about the fact that we never know how bad problems like that can be. The captain told us, his flight crew, that the problem had been with the rudder, and made it seem like it was more of a serious annoyance, rather than a potential safety problem. The passengers never heard any more than the fact that the plane was safe to fly but needed to be looked at ASAP. In fact, a rudder issue is a pretty serious issue. I wasn't too far off to be thinking along the lines of "evacuation" as opposed to "this is a really annoying problem".
I'm not saying that the next time you hear the words "mechanical" or "issue" that you take it to mean that the plane is going to fall out of the sky, but it usually is worse than you hear. The best rule of thumb is that if the flight crew is relaxed, everything is fine. If the pilots are making numerous announcements, you're more than fine. If it was super serious, they'd be so busy they'd barely have time to speak to the flight attendants, much less make rambling PA announcements.
Anyway. Interesting day.
I started in Orlando this afternoon, and all I had to do was a short Asheville turn (meaning we work there, deplane, load up, and fly right back) and then fly as a passenger back to Atlanta. Leaving Orlando was normal up until about ten minutes after we took off. We hadn't had an indication from the pilots that we were above 10,000 feet (which is when you can turn your stuff back on and the crew gets up), and then all of a sudden we leveled off - in fact, the tail came up so fast, I thought we had changed our minds and were headed back down to Orlando.
Eventually the captain called us and said, "We're having a mechanical issue; just stand by." I immediately started running through our emergency evacuation procedures. It was a little comforting; there was no fear, just a review of everything that I needed to do and that could come up (namely, that my exit would be unusable). Thank God, it never came to that. Instead, we diverted to Atlanta and simply got a new plane. When we got off the old plane, there were about six mechanics in the jet bridge, and one said, "You're lucky to be here!" Which, ugh. Don't tell me that.
The rest of the day was uneventful, though by the time we finally got to Orlando, I had to rush to my Atlanta flight and I didn't eat dinner until 10:30 - I was going to have a few minutes to grab something at the airport, but several factors took that extra time away. I'm happy to be home tonight, and I'm going to spend my on-call time at home tomorrow, which will be the first time this has happened in almost a year.
My parents had a lot of questions for me when I got home, and it got me thinking about the fact that we never know how bad problems like that can be. The captain told us, his flight crew, that the problem had been with the rudder, and made it seem like it was more of a serious annoyance, rather than a potential safety problem. The passengers never heard any more than the fact that the plane was safe to fly but needed to be looked at ASAP. In fact, a rudder issue is a pretty serious issue. I wasn't too far off to be thinking along the lines of "evacuation" as opposed to "this is a really annoying problem".
I'm not saying that the next time you hear the words "mechanical" or "issue" that you take it to mean that the plane is going to fall out of the sky, but it usually is worse than you hear. The best rule of thumb is that if the flight crew is relaxed, everything is fine. If the pilots are making numerous announcements, you're more than fine. If it was super serious, they'd be so busy they'd barely have time to speak to the flight attendants, much less make rambling PA announcements.
Anyway. Interesting day.