Location: Westchester Co, NY or Rio Grande Valley, TX or ???
Programs: WN RR, FL A+ Elite, UA M+, CO 1Pass, HH (D), BD*S
Posts: 377
Wow! I was on that aircraft this morning! (HPN - ATL; the lead FA did a great job, especially in politely preventing a pax from boarding with too many carry-ons.) I hope everyone is OK. IIRC, the captain said he & his FO would be staying on the plane for its next flight (although I don't remember him saying MLI).
Wow! I was on that aircraft this morning! (HPN - ATL; the lead FA did a great job, especially in politely preventing a pax from boarding with too many carry-ons.) I hope everyone is OK. IIRC, the captain said he & his FO would be staying on the plane for its next flight (although I don't remember him saying MLI).
Yeah, really lucky day for tonight. Its look like what AA did slidded off the runway in ORD tonight. I think ORD will eventually shutdown tonight due to snowstorm in ORD, MLI and etc.
__________________
ASL (American Sign Languages)
2009 Travel: DL 4336 MQMs
My brother was on the flight, and let me tell you, the media made more of a story out of it than it called for (as they tend to to do). I just wish I had brought my camera when I went to pick him up that day!
There was no "skidding" or "sliding off the runway" per se. They landed normally on RW 27 but apparently rolled right past (at taxi speed) the preferred taxiway (maybe E or H1). I'm not sure why (perhaps because taxiway H2 hadn't been cleared of snow yet?), but the pilot(s) decided to do a left-hand U-turn on the RW instead of proceeding to the next/last taxiway.
Apparently they didn't swing wide enough to "prime" the turn and so they couldn't negotiate the turn. Part of the right main landing gear ended up going over the runway edge, getting lodged in a snow drift (I'm not sure if the forward landing gear went over as well). They decided to deplane the passengers on the tarmac (roll out the porta-stairs) and bus them to the terminal. Conditions were fine...partly sunny and some blowing snow from the ground (it wasn't snowing... just blowing around a bit).
My brother said that it was pretty much a non-event. The worst part is that it delayed/cancelled other flights into/out of MLI, including my sister's NWA flight from MSP, which was on the tarmac and just about to take off (over an hour late) when they got the ground hold call from MLI. They just cancelled the flight, never rescheduled it, and continued the rest of their normal flights an hour or two later when MLI opened back up.
The passengers waiting to board AirTran 387 nonstop back to MCO had to wait for another plane to be flown in. They left at 4:04 CST, made a stop in Atlanta for some reason, and didn't get into MCO until 9 PM EST (they were originally scheduled get in around 2:40 PM).
So the lesson learned is that when the media says that a plane "skidded off the runway," it might just mean that a plane tried to make a U-turn and part of the landing gear went off the RW.
So the lesson learned is that when the media says that a plane "skidded off the runway," it might just mean that a plane tried to make a U-turn and part of the landing gear went off the RW.
The midwest equivalent for cars (and its common this time of year) is having to wait to be towed out of a ditch or medium strip.
Programs: HH Silver, US Silver, CO Nonepass, AS Non-MVP
Posts: 4,428
Just goes to show the depths of "lazy or inexperienced media" coverage these days. When I first heard about the very serious CO incident in DEN, one reporter said that the plane "slid off the runway" as well -- vastly different from this incident in MLI.
Of course, the previous poster may liken it to a car sliding into a ditch at a slow speed vs a car flipping into the ditch and catching fire.
