Departure: New York LaGuardia
Date: October 2007
My seatmate mentioned something about watching the pilot talking to one of the maintenance crew while doing the normal visual inspection of the aircraft prior to takeoff. Several minutes later, I remember the pilot telling us all that they were “doing something back there” and we’d be departing momentarily. And he was right-we did leave shortly thereafter.
About 40 minutes or so into the flight, the pilot announces that we’re “too heavy” and must return to New York, but to JFK. This seemed strange because we left LaGuardia where there were flights to Dallas every hour. Maybe it was closer. Who knows? Now I thought it was weird that they would declare the weight of the plane too heavy that late into the flight. Surely they were aware of our weight prior to leaving the ground but again, I’m no pilot and I don’t know this stuff. But here’s where it gets weird, as we’re landing I can see all of these emergency vehicles lined up on both sides of the runway. There must have been AT LEAST 30 fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, and airport emergency vehicles. A little excessive for a routine landing, I thought.
Then as we’re waiting to board our return flight on a different aircraft (about six hours later, I might add), we were talking with a woman who had some information. Apparently, a woman she had just talked to forgot something on the original plane and when she went back to get it, she overheard the pilot telling the crew about some red light that was on in the cockpit and that the generator had failed. It’s obvious why they wouldn’t announce this to everyone on the plane for fear of mass-panic, but have you ever heard of this before? If so, is it not possible to fly without a generator? Just curious. I’m wondering how close, if at all, we were to a potentially catastrophic event. It did end up being a 13-hour travel day.
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1 comment:
I see by the date stamp of this comment that I am a bit late in my attempt to address this comment, not necessarily answer it, but address it.
Being a former airline pilot myself, and currently employed by the FAA for the past 16 years, I do find this action taken by your unknown crew most unusal. BUT, I also have not been given the city pairs of this flight, or the make model of the aircraft of the airplane in question or much of any other of facts surrounding this in flight turn-back.
First:
By regulation, YES . . . all airline flying turbo-jet airplanes in passenger carrying operations under revenue service is REQUIRED to know what the gross take off weight of the airplane is, PRIOR to its taking off.
Next:
All multi-engine aircraft flying passengers in revennue service will have several redundant systems onboard in many different areas. They are designed that way. This example of the single generator is a perfect example of why the FAA requires aircraft manufacturers to install more then one generator on an aircraft. There usually is one generator per engine installed. This helps to provide the necessary electrical requirements of the aircraft during its flight. A crew is trained to handle situations such as this, i.e., opertating on a single generator.
Usually, and remember I do not have all the facts in this situation that has been described in the prior narrative, but usually, if a generator fails somewhere during the flight, the crew will try and minimize the amount of electric power needed by the aircraft for the remainder of the flight but will continue to their destination.
There are always reasons why a crew will, in one situation, continue on to their destination and in another the captain will make the decision to turn back to the airport they recently departed or divert to a closer airport if the situation requires that.
In the case of turning back to the departure airport after a generator failed in this flight, the reason may be as simple as that there was no maintenance avialable at the destination airport to get the airplane repaired. If the airplane's problem is one that cannot be deferred by regulation with passengers onboard then the airline will not be able to get the problem fixed at the original airport of destination. The airplane will have to depart on the very next takeoff without passengers onboard, to a or back to a maintennce facility and then loose revenue on that leg, besides the time that the crew has to officially log as duty time.
I really do not have enough information on this but I have learned after close to 40 years in aviation that there usually are good reasons why captains and first officers make the decisiosn that they do up front.
As I stated earlier, it does seem a little strange that after take off the crew would turn back and not press on to the original destination. But, then none of us have all the information need to figure this out. This is where the FAA principal maintenance inspector should read the reason for the turn back and analyze it. This iusually falls under various reports that must be filed with the FAA. This is called a Maintenance Interruption Report. This shoould help to clairify what actually took place.
Hope this helps just a little.
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