I almost bit the bullet yesterday

[ariansworld]

Yesterday I went to Pittsburgh international airport to catch a flight to Washington DC, which then went to Charlotte and then on to Birmingham AL.  Well the 1:50 P.M. depart time comes and goes.  I then hear an announcement made by one of the ladies at the gate she said the new depart time is at 2:30 p.m. .  So I though ok I can wait that long.  2:30 comes and goes, then at about 3 p.m.  they start boarding the plane.  So I got on it, shortly after 3:30 p.m. we taxi down on the tarmac to the runway.  We get airborne and while we were climbing my ears were popping and hurting a lot.  When we got to about 15,000 ft the oxygen masks dropped and the captain instantly starts dropping altitude to below 10k.  The flight attendants then announced do not use the oxygen masks due to the plane being under 10k ft.  I looked out my window and noticed that the seal on it was hanging about halfway out,  but I dont suspect that caused the depressurization. Anyhow we turned around and went back to Pittsburgh.  When we got there and landed they had every available emergency crew escorting our plane back to the gate. We got to the gate and they tried putting that cat walk thing to the front hatch to let us off the plane.  The front hatch would not open.  So we got stuck on the aircraft for 30 minutes until they opened the rear hatch and let us off with flight stairs.  I then rebooked the flight for 7:45 last night and went to Charlotte then on to Birmingham.  I got to Birmingham and went to the baggage claim, and only one of my bags made it there.  I was really unhappy about the fact that $500 of my bowling equipment was missing.   Well anyhow I am glad to be sitting at home alive.


Arian

[caldera]

Scary stuff right there. Air travel is totally safe, as long as they can RTB in time. 


$500?  Did you bring some kind of portable bowling computer with you? 

[JB88]

glad you made it safe.

[Shane]

The NTSB investigation will probably discover a spherical hole in the bulkheads... about the size of a $500 bowling ball.   

any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

[Getback]

Wow. Glad it worked out. Did you put on clean underwear like your mom said.

[CAP1]

Yesterday I went to Pittsburgh international airport to catch a flight to Washington DC, which then went to Charlotte and then on to Birmingham AL.  Well the 1:50 P.M. depart time comes and goes.  I then hear an announcement made by one of the ladies at the gate she said the new depart time is at 2:30 p.m. .  So I though ok I can wait that long.  2:30 comes and goes, then at about 3 p.m.  they start boarding the plane.  So I got on it, shortly after 3:30 p.m. we taxi down on the tarmac to the runway.  We get airborne and while we were climbing my ears were popping and hurting a lot.  When we got to about 15,000 ft the oxygen masks dropped and the captain instantly starts dropping altitude to below 10k.  The flight attendants then announced do not use the oxygen masks due to the plane being under 10k ft.  I looked out my window and noticed that the seal on it was hanging about halfway out,  but I dont suspect that caused the depressurization. Anyhow we turned around and went back to Pittsburgh.  When we got there and landed they had every available emergency crew escorting our plane back to the gate. We got to the gate and they tried putting that cat walk thing to the front hatch to let us off the plane.  The front hatch would not open.  So we got stuck on the aircraft for 30 minutes until they opened the rear hatch and let us off with flight stairs.  I then rebooked the flight for 7:45 last night and went to Charlotte then on to Birmingham.  I got to Birmingham and went to the baggage claim, and only one of my bags made it there.  I was really unhappy about the fact that $500 of my bowling equipment was missing.   Well anyhow I am glad to be sitting at home alive.


Arian

well, that just goes to show how well the safety systems in place really work. something like that could've turned out much much worse, if not for the safety systems in place.

glad you're ok.

btw.....$500.00 of bowling stuff?

[SunBat]

15,000ft    Must have been a rook.    

Seriously, glad you made it out okay. 

[AKHog]

Well in all seriousness you probably were not in *that* much danger. Sounds like the cabin was not keeping pressure and was slowly depressurizing as you climbed. Then once the cabin pressure droped below a certain level the O2 masks automatically deployed. Just shows the safety systems were working and really the whole situation was probably not that big of a deal.

A slightly more dangerous situation would be a rapid depressurization at altitude. Even this is well trained for by airline crews. Above certain altitudes the pilots are required to have o2 masks at the ready and are also trained to do rapid decent techniques to get to a safe altitude in minutes. Assuming its a minor leak, and not a giant hole in the side of the fues sucking people out, chances are again in this situation you are really not in that much danger. Being at 20-30,000 feet isn't really that bad for you for short periods of time. You might go hypoxic and even pass out but if you get down in a reasonable amount of time there is little chance for long term damage. Chances are you'd get the o2 mask on before any of that happened anyway. I have paragliding and hang gliding friends that have flown to 23,000 with no o2, not the smartest thing (or legal) but it can be done. PG pilots have been sucked up in clouds to even higher alts and survived to tell the story.

I've been in a plane when the o2 masks drop. I admit for the first moment it startled me too and all kinds of things raced through my head, probably not from the masks dropping but from half the plane screaming at once. But after a few seconds it was obvious it was either a malfunction or the cabin only had a slight pressure problem, and we were not in real danger. It was funny to look around at some of the expressions of peoples face for the next few minutes though!

[Selino631]

15,000ft    Must have been a rook.    

Seriously, glad you made it out okay. 

are you kidding? 15K is looow!!! LoL!



Hey that sounds kinda scary. hope ya get ur stuff back

[Golfer]

Flight tracking shows the airplane in question never got above 11,000' during the flight and on the aircraft in question the passenger oxygen masks do not drop automatically until 14,000.  This means the masks were deployed by the crew and leads to the Cabin Altitude Hi checklist.  This is a "red item" on the airplane in question and has immediate action items associated with it.  The very first item after the immediate action items ("memory items") is to deploy the masks manually regardless of altitude.

Essentially all this means is that it looks like the airplane wouldn't pressurize properly.  How does this impact your safety?  It really doesn't.  It throws a wrench into your travel plans as Arian discovered but the airplane at that point is fully functional and all other systems are operating normally.  There's a pretty good clue as to why there was a problem after the airplane returned to the gate in the main door not opening.  If there was an obstruction that was closed into the door for instance allowing all the locking pins to seat properly but providing a gap for air to pass through it will appear properly closed but not hold pressure.  The only time you'd discover whether or not this has happened is when you're airborne and the airplane is beginning to pressurize.  It might not manifest itself until several PSI are on the airplane or perhaps a slightly high climb schedule but regardless it's not something typically encountered.

Notifying ATC of a pressurization problem can be vague.  Using the magic "E-word" of Emergency cuts through all confusion and grants the declaring aircraft priority over everyone else.  You're first in line to land and there will be safety vehicles awaiting your return to the airport in the event of any problems.  You want them there because there is no delay in response in the event something does not go according to plan.  Again this is normal.

All in all death was not cheated, fate was not stared down and all that happened was you got to Birmingham late.  The most important thing in all this is for you to shoot your travel agent for booking you on 3 legs to get to Birmingham!  Hopefully you'll get your balls back   

[Reschke]

Glad to see you made it back...soiled under wear and all that...BTW I am with Golfer on this one. You certainly did not need 3 separate flights to get from Pittsburgh back to Birmingham. One stop in Charlotte should have been enough or through Cincinnati.

[bj229r]

Charlotte...I was flying out of there mebbe 6-7 years ago, in the puddle-jumper terminal. Saw the gate next to mine board, went back to reading book....15 minutes later saw some guy walking down the aisle crying...(was thinking, what a girly-man'....) A moment later I found out that plane splashed at the end of the runway and all those people from the next gate died. (That was the US Air flight where the load was horribly unbalanced and the pilot couldn't trim the plane, and it stalled and slammed down just after liftoff)

[CAP1]

Flight tracking shows the airplane in question never got above 11,000' during the flight and on the aircraft in question the passenger oxygen masks do not drop automatically until 14,000.  This means the masks were deployed by the crew and leads to the Cabin Altitude Hi checklist.  This is a "red item" on the airplane in question and has immediate action items associated with it.  The very first item after the immediate action items ("memory items") is to deploy the masks manually regardless of altitude.

Essentially all this means is that it looks like the airplane wouldn't pressurize properly.  How does this impact your safety?  It really doesn't.  It throws a wrench into your travel plans as Arian discovered but the airplane at that point is fully functional and all other systems are operating normally.  There's a pretty good clue as to why there was a problem after the airplane returned to the gate in the main door not opening.  If there was an obstruction that was closed into the door for instance allowing all the locking pins to seat properly but providing a gap for air to pass through it will appear properly closed but not hold pressure.  The only time you'd discover whether or not this has happened is when you're airborne and the airplane is beginning to pressurize.  It might not manifest itself until several PSI are on the airplane or perhaps a slightly high climb schedule but regardless it's not something typically encountered.

Notifying ATC of a pressurization problem can be vague.  Using the magic "E-word" of Emergency cuts through all confusion and grants the declaring aircraft priority over everyone else.  You're first in line to land and there will be safety vehicles awaiting your return to the airport in the event of any problems.  You want them there because there is no delay in response in the event something does not go according to plan.  Again this is normal.

All in all death was not cheated, fate was not stared down and all that happened was you got to Birmingham late.  The most important thing in all this is for you to shoot your travel agent for booking you on 3 legs to get to Birmingham!  Hopefully you'll get your balls back   

i like when you come in on these. your responses are almost always informative. 

[grizz441]

The NTSB investigation will probably discover a spherical hole in the bulkheads... about the size of a $500 bowling ball.   

any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

  Shane.  Glad you're safe though!

[USRanger]

Do you get to keep your perkies?