Hear Ye! Since 1998.
Please note: This post is at least 3 years old. Links may be broken, information may be out of date, and the views expressed in the post may no longer be held.
3
Nov 05
Thu

United’s last kick in the pants

So everyone’s sitting in their seats at 10.00pm and the 14 hour United Airways flight to Sydney is due to depart San Fran at 10.15pm. The captain gets on the PA system and says, “Good evening, we’ve just done our pre-flight check walkaround and noticed that there’s fuel leaking from one of our engines.” Big groans all around. He continued. “Obviously that’s not a good thing. So what we’re going to have to do is disassemble the engine, have a look around to find out where the leak is coming from and then put everything back together again. United apologises for the inconvenience, and we will keep you posted.”

One minute later he gets back on the PA and adds, “On second thought, it’s probably going to be quicker if we just swap planes so we’re going to have to get you to deplane in a moment.” Pause. “Uh, you might also want to bring your pillow and blanket with you to the new plane.”

“Quicker” meant several hours while we waited for the crew, food, luggage and 360,000 pounds of fuel to be transferred across. But at least it’s nice to be home in one piece.

This post has 2 comments

1.  Ros

Welcome home!

2.  tony

It will definitely take them a while to transfer crew, pax, luggage, and fuel. most importantly, they have to match up every pax and his/her luggage, just in case to prevent the Lockerbie incident from happening again. A Boeing 747 suffered cabin explosion mid-air, sending it to crashing to the village underneath near Lockerbie – it was a terrorist attack.

It’s good that (1) they decided to swap planes, and (2) they took time to sort out things and did not rush. Accidents usually occur when rush is present and patience is absent.

Cheers~

Add a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.