Flight 7
Scary Times at High Altitude
I am a firm believer that lightning can, and does, strike twice.
In February 1993, I was in Venezuela visiting Ferrominera del Orinoco (FMO), the stated-owned iron ore mining company. Following a few days in Caracas, I boarded an Avensa DC-9 headed for Puerto Ordaz, on the Orinoco River, to visit the operational headquarters of FMO. Although Avensa was originally a joint venture between a Venezuelan businessman and Pan American World Airways, it was state owned by 1976. This was always a concern to me when traveling on airlines in South America because they tended to acquire their aircraft secondhand from American airlines that thought their useful life was up.
The flight time from Maiquetia Simon Bolivar Airport, which serves Caracas, and Puerto Ordaz is about one hour, and we had leveled off at about 25,000 feet in clear skies when all of a sudden the cabin decompressed. What I recall most clearly about this incident is how quickly it all happened. There was a loud bang and my ears popped, and just as I started to realize something was wrong, the oxygen masks tumbled out from the ceiling above us, and the plane went into a steep descent. I immediately put the oxygen mask over my nose and mouth, as did the occupant in the seat next to me.
There were small items, such as glasses and bags of food, that came shooting up toward us as the plane seemed to plunge out of the sky. What frightened me more than anything was the dive, as it was not clear whether we were falling out of the sky or simply in a very steep, controlled descent. After what seemed like an eternity, but which was probably no more than a minute, we leveled off and the captain came on the public address system. In a very calm voice, he announced all was okay, as though nothing had happened, and that we would be landing in Puerto Ordaz, as scheduled. Although we were never told the reason for what had happened, I suspect it was a door that incorrectly sealed on takeoff or some sort of minor structural failure.
Nearly twenty years later, on May 28, 2012, I am flying from Toronto to Tokyo-Narita, on Air Canada 001—a daily Boeing 777 service this airline has had for several years to Japan. Air Canada had just inaugurated its new 1-2-1 “Business-First” reverse herringbone seating, which I have used many times since. My brother is a captain for Air Canada (Airbus 330s), and my son works in Air Canada management, but I am independently a big fan of this airline. In my opinion, it is the best in North America.
I was in seat 2K, on the right side, and we took off on time and in good weather. As usual, I was reading, and about five minutes into our climb, I looked out my window to see that although the plane was still on an incline, it appeared to me that we were not climbing. AC 001 seemed to be moving forward with the nose up, but we were not gaining altitude. In other words, the climb had stopped. I watched this for another ten to fifteen minutes, and as time went by, I became more and more concerned. Finally the captain came on to say that shortly after takeoff the right engine had shut down. I looked back and could see some smoke coming from the engine and later we learned that some pieces of metal had come off the engine casement and had fallen on some vehicles close to Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.
Unlike my TWA flight, when we had two of four engines running, this two-engine Boeing 777 only had one of her engines working. And if one engine is not working, and you are not climbing, it’s not fun. The captain explained he was going to perform a slow left-hand turn and head out over Lake Ontario to dump fuel before heading the plane back to Pearson International. The whole process from the first announcement to landing took just under forty-five minutes. I kept thinking: There is no room for another engine failure! Before landing, the captain advised us to prepare for an emergency landing, and the flight attendants took us through the procedures.
When we landed and proceeded to stop at the end of the runway, we were met with various emergency vehicles. Because we landed at an excessive speed, the flight deck crew had to apply heavy pressure to the aircraft’s brakes, and there was a fear that the tires might catch fire. This explained why the fuselage around the middle of the plane and the tires were all hosed down with fire retardant.
We were another hour on the ground before it was considered safe to tow the plane back to the terminal so that we could disembark. And I recall the captain’s surname—Anderson—and he was so calm and collected as he spoke to us over the plane’s PA system. But once we arrived at the gate and commenced to disembark, he was standing in the cubicle area behind the cockpit. As I walked past him and offered my congratulations on a safe landing, you could see how physically drained he was. It had been ninety minutes of very intense work for him and his crew.
My brother, the captain on Air Canada Airbus 330s, tells me airplane pilots have a saying that commercial flying is “99.9 percent boredom and 0.1 percent sheer terror”!