[LeTigre]

While I suggest that some passenger reports of “wobbliness” are hysteria, especially on a leisure flight without frequent flyers but one passenger did report smoke coming from the cockpit which I consider a far more likely cause.

It is a far more regular occurrence for emergency landings to be cause by smoke in the cockpit than for a plane to crash because of wobbliness!

[FormerlyDoS]

Well it bloody well made me wobbly when Austrian Airlines managed to simulate a fire on take off, by spilling the oily gravy from 70 individual goulash meals onto the inside of hot ovens.

The subsequent ‘cooking off’ led to thick grey smoke coming up the aisle and obscuring the view to the extent that one could not see the last 4-5 rows of Y seats on the A320.

Coupled with the fire alarms going off, not very nice.

Afterwards, the Arab gentleman sitting next to me asked my advice on selecting the strongest wine on offer – he said Allah would forgive his indiscretion under the circumstance, but did inform me that the large glass of Shiraz was the first and only glass of alcohol that he would ever drink, as it tasted horrible. 5 mins later, he was asleep and had to be woken up at the destination, so I guess it worked for him.

[LeTigre]

Ha, great story, DOS.

Most of my near death experiences have been aboard Ryanair on some of their dodgy landings, including several one wheel, triple jump landings.

[FormerlyDoS]

To be fair to FR pilots, the 738 does not have a reputation as being easy to ‘grease’ on and the one wheelers were probably deliberate practice in a cross wind.

[Bucksnet]

Rich, give up on the faulty pitot tube cover story already!

[LuganoPirate]

Unlike the priest DoS, who on being offered another glass of wine upon reaching cruising altitude, declined, as he was “too close too headquarters!”

[FormerlyDoS]

Nice one 🙂

[VintageKrug]

I wouldn’t set much store by a comment by random rent a quote passengers.

This is probably a more reliable source:

http://radans.net/jens/planestory.html

[stevescoots]

I was just reading the article on the daily wail site….

so, florida is now only an hour from gatwick? midflight, 30 minutes?

“The giant America-bound Airbus A330-300 was forced to turn around mid-flight and land back in Britain around 30 minutes after take-off”

suspended indefinetly…, indefinatly as in undefined length of time…not as in open a few hours later then

” This caused scores of flights in and out of the West Sussex airport to be suspended indefinitely”

[RichHI1]

Journalists, don’t you love them. “Giant” 330? Inthought the 380 was the biggest plane they made. Will we ever get an aviation stiry in the press where he journalist actual understands what they are writing about? No disrespect BT is exclude specialist Journalists.

[ToxicAir]

Although there should be a full independent (is that possible when the CAA is funded by the airlines??) investigation of the incident, it would be useful to understand the reports that there was smoke and fumes in the cabin at the time of the emergency being called.
Steve Ridgeway CEO was quick to state that there was a technical fault rather than smoke in the cabin. Think the ‘Spin-Doctors’ prepped him well before he went in front of the cameras!
I think that this could have have been a ‘fume’ incident caused by engine oil entering the cabin from the ‘bleed air’ intakes on the engines…HIGHLY TOXIC! (www.aerotoxic.org)
If you are frequent flier please read this site…it could save your health or even your life!!

[Author]

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