Sometimes things just don't go as planned. Yesterday as we were speeding down the runway in Atlanta we began to hear an unusual hum and feel a slight vibration. The captain chose to continue the takeoff and as we rotated (pulled back on the controls to become airborn) we felt something strike the fuselage.
"That felt like we blew a tire," the captain said as we lifted off. Another minute later we told the tower controller what had happened and warned him that there was likely some FOD (foreign object debris) on the runway. Sure enough, the pilots of the next plane taking off saw pieces of rubber on the asphalt. This confirmed our suspicion and after consulting with our dispatcher and maintenance, we elected to return to Atlanta.
One problem, however--we were overweight. The Canadair Regional Jet's maximum landing weight is 47,000 lbs. and we were at 50,000 lbs. Instead of risking an overweight landing, we decided it would be best to burn off fuel and then land. We slowed down and put flaps down to increase drag and thereby increase our fuel burn. I felt bad burning off around 450 gallons of jet fuel--probably costing around $1,800. What a waste in this time of high fuel prices, but that's how it goes. After 30 minutes we were low enough that we were confident we would be under our max weight by the time we touched down. Just to be as safe as possible we did declare an emergency and fire equipment were dispatched to meet us upon landing.
The landing was uneventful. The captain landed very gingerly, since we still didn't know which tire had blown. First the mains smoothly made contact. Then when the captain lowered the nose gear we felt the vibration again and knew that it was one of the nose gear tires that had blown. Fortunately our worst fear of being unable to control the aircraft on the ground didn't materialize and we taxied to our gate without further incident.
Once at the gate we were met by maintenance and other ASA personnel. One of them was kind enough to take a few pictures, as well as present the captain with a piece of the tire as a trophy of sorts. In the end it was a great learning experience, one I hope not to repeat again too soon.
4 comments:
Whoa...that would have scared the life out of me. I'm glad you guys were able to land safely.
Like you, I feel a bit sickened by the idea of how much fuel was burned, however, can one put a price tag on all of those human lives?
Been there, done that- well sort of! What an excellent job you both did in handling the situation.
BTW, NICE pictures! How did you get the pics from him?
Teachinfourth,
You are absolutely correct that human lives are priceless, so there was never any question. I've had people tell me that they could never handle the pressure of being responsible for so many people's lives, but self-preservation does a fine job--if I live then I figure everyone else will live too.
Annette,
The ASA gate coordinator took the pictures and showed us, then asked if we had email addresses he could send them to. He was true to his word and gave me excellent material for this blog entry! I thanked him, of course.
Wow! Thankfully I've never experienced anything like that while flying. That's scary.
I hope they changed both those tires becuase the other one sure looked like it had seen better days. Does that happen very often?
I'm glad that everything ended ok.
Post a Comment