Sounds like some passengers weren't too pleased with the evacuation . . .
Winnipeg Free Press
Monday, August 14th, 2006
Crew fumbles in-flight emergency
By Bartley Kives
When shampoo and coffee are potential instruments of terror, it’s easy to forget the real danger of air travel is the mundane stuff of malfunctioning gear and human incompetence.
Both factors conspired to turn a routine flight from Ottawa to Winnipeg Monday morning into a scene from a bad airplane disaster comedy — where I played the unwilling minor role of “Cranky Guy in Seat 25 C.”
This is no ordinary tale of flight delays. This is a story of a smoke-filled Air Canada Jazz flight carrying 61 passengers and a crew of four that apparently learned to deal with minor emergencies by watching old episodes of Mr. Bean.
The morning began with usual yawns and stomach rumblings associated with a 6:30 a.m. flight, compounded by the depressing knowledge a two-week holiday would be over when my plane landed in Winnipeg at 8:20 a.m.
But that didn’t happen. Thirty minutes west of Ottawa, my Bombardier CRJ turned around in mid-air and began heading back to MacDonald Cartier International Airport.
“Why?” asked a couple of passengers who managed not to doze off after takeoff.
“Don’t worry. The pilot is about to make an announcement,” said a tall, female flight attendant.
The pilot then said he noticed a caution light on an instrument panel and we needed to return to Ottawa so mechanics could check out the problem.
The flight attendant then assured passengers there was nothing wrong — only seconds before oxygen masks dropped and ears began to pop as the cabin partially depressurized.
Her comic timing was excellent. She has a future in stand-up, as does our pilot, who took more than 90 seconds to inform passengers that yes, we really did need to put on those masks in order to keep breathing.
Despite the ensuing weirdness, most of us remained calm as Flight 8471 returned to Ottawa, did a little aerial jig around the airport and finally landed.
And that’s when the really fun stuff started.
On the tarmac, the flight attendant told us to stay in our seats and keep our belts on — which was weird, considering grey, wispy smoke had begun to fill the cabin.
Moments later, we were instructed to leave all our personal belongings and exit the plane from the front door. But after an elderly couple tried to remove their carry-on baggage — after all, the pilot said there was “no problem” — the flight attendant with the microphone panicked.
“Leave everything! Get out! Get out!” she shrieked, which is excellent advice when you’re trying to get 61 people to file out of a narrow vessel in single file.
“Get out! Leave everything! GET OUT!” she continued, joined by two other flight attendants at the back.
Predictably, some passengers began screaming. Others began pushing and shoving. Then somebody tore open the rear right emergency door to make an even quicker exit off the right wing.
The problem was, there was no emergency slide in place to soften the landing from the wing to the hard asphalt. But that flight attendant kept shrieking, turning a minor situation into a potentially deadly one.
One female passenger broke her arm and appeared to twist an ankle after someone landed on her. Two other people got minor bumps and bruises on their way out of the plane.
Even then, the idiocy continued. “Run! Run! Run!” implored the ground crew on the tarmac, as if the CRJ was about to explode like a prop from a Schwarzenegger movie.
The deal is, there was just a little smoke. It was probably faulty wiring or some other minor mechanical problem.
After a few minutes back in the terminal, all of us — or at least the 60 who didn’t have to go to hospital — got our hand-luggage back and were re-routed to Winnipeg through Toronto.
I arrived in Winnipeg at 6:30 p.m., 13 hours after first attempting to leave Ottawa. My experience was more annoying than harrowing.
But imagine if that wacky Air Canada Jazz crew had to deal with a real emergency?
That, my friends, would be genuinely frightening.
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