Take-Off Attempts
After two weeks on business trip in Germany, I finally started the journey home, but that turned out to be easier said than done. I was on the road with Swiss Air this time and everything went fine until Zuerich. The plane from Stuttgart to Zuerich was a little delayed but nothing dramatic, and check in for the flight to Tokyo went fine.
We roll with towards the runway on board an airbus A340-300. Captain says “crew, take-off in two minutes” and we roll onto the runway, the engines start, we get faster, then, suddenly, half down the runway, moments before lift-off, the pilot kicks in the brakes and everything not fixed or belted to the seats tumbles forward. Without seat belts on we’d all have gotten into real trouble. Then the plane leaves the runway and rolls to the side. The captain tells the crew “crew, normal operations” to “unwarn” them. A few moments later the captain tells us: “Well, you surely noticed that we aborted take-off. We did so due to an indication we got here in the cockpit that our engine number two has an issue with reverse thrust. We’ll check it now and if all’s well, we can make another take-off attempt, maybe in thirty minutes, depending on whether the brakes have cooled down again. At the moment, they are too hot for us to start again, we’ll keep you posted.”
Gulp.
I’m not sure what consequences such an engine failure can have.
After maybe 15 min, the captain tells us, they discussed with the mechanics and they want us to come back to the gate and we don’t know yet whether we can continue with this plane. So, back to the gate we roll, but we are asked to stay on board. Checking the seat pocket contents reveals that an A340-300 has four engines, which reassures me a little bit, even if the number two engine fails, we still have another three… ahem…
A truck comes and places itself under engine two and the nervous passengers wait.
We were all quite disciplined though and nobody freaked out. Of course we are asking the cabin crew what will happen if the plane will be grounded and sure, they don’t have planes lying around in waiting. If we cannot fly with this machine, we won’t get to Tokyo today… which would have meant disembarking, retrieving luggage, getting a hotel, waiting for another flight… aiiiii…. so, I was kinda praying that they’d be able to fix the problem.
About ninety minutes later the truck is gone and the captain announces we’re good to go. Back into our seats, back to the runway. Of course everyone was a little nervous and tense, but this time the plane lifted off as it should and I found nothing wrong with its operations during the flight to Japan.
But, an entirely different problem arose. I was sitting in the back of the plane, row forty and the plane was not fully booked. So, initially I thought, yeah, this is going to be a good flight, where I can spread myself over two seats. Trouble was that around me in the back was a group of about ten 30 to 50 year-old French speaking men and as soon as the plane lifted off, they started binge drinking.
They killed several bottles of high percentage booze that they must have bought in duty free. The whole rear of the plane soon stank of booze and the assholes were talking non-stop and incredibly loud. I asked them once to be more quiet, two cabin crew members told them on different occasions to stop drinking their own alcohol and to be more quiet but to no avail. They fuxxers had zero consideration for the other passengers, zero.
The highlight was that, completely drunk and not knowing anymore what he was doing, one of the fuxxing assholes suddenly lunged over my seat and grabbed my soft hat, while I was finally kinda falling asleep. I got a huge scare, managed to catch my hat and shouted at the guy “are you fucking crazy, leave me alone!” The sucker said something incomprehensible, then said he was sorry, but I’m sure he was so stoned he neither knew what he was saying nor what he was doing. Incredible.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen such a bunch of idiots on a flight. These morons behaved like teenagers away from home for the first time.
I am angry with the cabin crew also, they should have been stricter and confiscated their alcohol or something, politely asking to be quiet and to stop drinking does not work with assholes like that.
Man, I was damn happy to be back on the ground with some two hours delay. What a horror flight… but, you gotta be grateful that nobody got hurt and that we landed safely…
