tigerswood
Well-known member
I ran into that situation (plus, more!) this summer.
Was on a flight from CLT to Cali, and after an hour in the air, we're notified of a landing gear problem that requires us to go back to Charlotte. But first we have to fly in circles for two hours to burn enough gas to land.
When we finally land back in CLT, it's late (after midnight), but they've secured another plane with a new crew to take us. So everyone deplanes and reboards...where we sit on this new plane for another hour waiting for the crew. Finally, we're notified that the plane can't leave because the new crew hadn't gotten their requisite sleep.
The remedy to this whole situation was a third plane slated to leave promptly at 8am. It wasn't worth it for us to leave and get a hotel on the Airline's dime, so we ended up 'sleeping' on the cold terminal floor. Oh yeah, we did all of this with our 3 year old in tow.
In hindsight, I should've lit into American on Twitter! It's just astounding the lack of communication and respect for airline customers.
Interesting on the fuel. I was on a quick flight from Denver to Aspen a couple years ago and the pilot comes on (a woman!, oh the horror!) and says, "Uhh folks, you might be wondering why we're zig zagging through the mountains here. We've gotta burn some fuel in order to land on Aspen's small runway, so just sit back and enjoy the views."
I was also on a flight from Vancouver to Dallas where the landing gear wouldn't come back up into the plane. Every time the pilot tried, it screwed with the pressure in the plane somehow and lit up everyone's ears/heads. The last time he tried, my dad and I both got vertigo and thought we were in a tailspin. Scary stuff. Pilot comes on and says we don't have enough fuel to make it to Dallas dragging landing gear, so we had to make an "emergency landing" in Seattle. Fire trucks and ambulances were screaming along side the plane as we landed, so I've always wondered if there was a reasonable chance the landing gear could have just failed altogether or something when we landed - or maybe we had too much fuel, still. Interesting to note that we watched Duke beat Wake in the Seattle airport on the Duhon buzzer beater that day. Lovely experience overall.