It was a short flight, Lansing, Michigan to Detroit, less than 100 miles in a small jet. I had been in Lansing for a couple of days facilitating meetings at a dysfunctional organization. I recommended that the CEO delegate a bunch of work, and trust people to do good work. She had a great staff. Instead she resigned.
Back to the airport. We boarded for the 20 minute flight to Detroit, and the Captain came over the speakers with the dreaded, we have a problem and we are going to deplane while the mechanics take a look at it. 20 minutes later the Captain comes into the terminal and makes an announcement. "The plane is sitting on the ground with all the wheels firmly on the ground, but the indicator lights say one of the landing gear is up. It is a bad switch. With the right part and a screwdriver it will be fixed in two minutes. The part is in Detroit. We have two choices, we can sit here for two-hours while someone drives the part over from Detroit, or we can lock the gear down, put in the locking pins so the gear can't go up and fly to Detroit, in about 40 minutes. We can't go over 10,000 feet, or over 150 miles per hour and it will be noisier than usual, but the plane is going to Detroit for the repair. If you want to ride along follow me to the plane, if not, Delta will have another plane here in three or four hours."
About half of the seats were empty on the flight to Detroit. I made my connection and was home on time.
This is strange. I've read this before on my RSS feed.
ReplyDeleteI would have done the same as you did.
Unrelated, in Australia today the last Boeing 717 commercial flight flew today by QantasLink, a regional subsidiary of Qantas.
Likely when I drafted it, it posted on the wrong date, and was reverted to draft and rescheduled. That would show up in a feed reader. The 717 was a rename of the MD88 after Boeing merged with MD. My father's post retirement job was with MD, he drew a tiny pension from them.
DeleteI would be a bit nervous, but then perhaps realize if the captain isn't bothered maybe it's not a "thing."
ReplyDeleteStill ...
This one was fairly rational, an easy malfunction to understand. Sometimes there are tears.
DeleteWas Mr. Penguin with you on this one? This adventure gave you a good story to share.
ReplyDeleteNow you know why penguins generally avoid flying... 😆
Delete