Heh think yourself lucky you don't have to sit next to her. Every expression on her face that isn't quite normal - especially if she's looking at the window - and what do you think that does to me?
Seriously though on one occasion coming back from hols she said "Why's he doing that?" to which I said "What?" and she said "He's cut the engines back to below minimum" which freaked me out. About 5 mins later it was announced we were diverting to Birmingham to refuel (there was pretty much a tropical downpour at East Mids so no landings - August 2005 I think?). Scary or what
Good job she wasnt on the Excalibur Airways flight from Manchester to Orlando that I was on in May <-> Jun 96.
Im not an expert on planes , but I'd flown enough times to be concerned at the "noises" that were coming from "some-where" down near the floor vent and reported it to the cabin crew as I was concerned, but my complaint was dismissed as normal.
The plane was supposed to be a "new" DC-10 as we'd been told by the travel agent - lol that was a joke
New to Excalibur perhaps - it was a reburb job - very badly done at that. It was very alarming when on approach to Orlando, a large part of the interior ceiling came crashing down, you know above the luggage stores - so all the cables and stuff were dangling down.
One week into our hols just outside of the everglades or gulf coast some remotish area, we were waiting for the post-office to open and we met up with a UK couple and started chatting and mentioned the flight, and they said that had we not heard the news that the next flight in had also had problems.
(The airline did the man-orlando once a week iirc)
Our flight back home, was not without event and we sat on the tarmac for a few hours whilst there was some problem with the doors, which had to be fixed. I cant recall exactly but I'm sure it was that the doors wouldnt close properly.
We got home ok, but the next week, the next flight after ours, hit the national and international news and some passengers simply refused to fly on the plane... This time because of an aborted take off due to smoke... and then the passengers couldnt get out due to the emergency doors being stuck.
Ironically that was the same year that the Valuejet flight went down in the
everglades.. and Whilst travelling through the Everglades "Tamiami Trail" (not the main H75?), we saw lots of emergency vehicles and TV trucks and wondered at the time what that was all about too.
It wasnt until we got back home and caught up on the news properly that I can understand why those that refused to board the Excalibur one had the wind put up them big time.
I believe the company went out of business just a couple of weeks later after a couple of scares with their aircraft. Cant really find much
info about
it now.