brentyb

6am PDX>SEA this morning, prop plane.

After boarding and doors shut on the plane, we sat for a few minutes and were told they were de-icing. FA turned off cabin lights, at which point I noticed a strange smell and saw what appeared to be smoke coming down from the overhead.

Shortly after that, a ding, FA picks up the phone, says understood and announces for all seat belts off, emergency rows to open the emergency doors and everyone evac immediately and do not bring any bags.

We quickly stepped off the plane, saw passengers jumping down off the other side, after moving to the outside canopy, we were quickly instructed to go back inside to the gate. A few minutes later, 3 or 4 fire trucks appeared. They were probably out there for 15 minutes or so, before they packed it up and left. I never heard any explanation to what happened, and they said they were bringing over a plane from the hanger and the baggage handlers and gate agents made several trips to hand carry all the carry-ons back inside.

Missed my connection to MCO, and I rebooked to a later PDX>MCO flight which gets us in about 6 hours later.

This was my first time experiencing an emergency evac, anyone here ever go through one?

What sort of compensation should be expected? I dont think the normal 100 voucher would cover it.

rune87

Not sure why you would be entitled to compensation for an emergency evac. Not something the airline planned to do. Definitely falls under .... happens, at least it wasnt worse. They got you rebooked on the next flight they could. Even in the EU you wouldnt be compensated.

flytoeat

Thanks for reporting first-hand on an unusual experience. Compensation? Is everything that transactional? Sigh.

jrl767

as a minimum, write to CS requesting Original Routing Credit (miles for as-booked PDX-SEA-MCO) if that’s important, but keep the story short and to the point

“AS2276 had an equipment swap at PDX due to a mechanical after doors were closed led to an emergency evacuation; as a result I flew PDX-MCO nonstop and arrived ~6 hours later”

if they throw in a voucher for the inconvenience, great; if not, just move on

RAD_PDX

It wouldn’t be flyertalk if somebody didn’t ask about compensation after being safely evacuated from an emergency aircraft .

anteater

I think Ben should resign until a full investigation into compensation-gate can be completed! /s

Twas a fair question, though I would have been happy being safe and accommodated on the next flight.

DTS

I am glad that, whatever the situation was, it apparently was handled quickly and safely. It sounds like nobody got injured (which can happen easily during an emergency evacuation).



Fair enough, let me give it a shot:
None.

Raymoland

Deice fluid into the APU (or pack air intake if engines running). Happens all the time. The APU burns the fluid and acrid smoke goes into the air conditioning packs and then into the cabin. Deice crews are trained not to do it but either lose control of the stream or forget the prohibition. Really surprised they evacced for that....They acrid smoke can be stopped u just turning off the packs. For us, if we have to deice with APU on, checklist has us turn off the packs to prevent this very occurrence. Good job it was a Dash. Going down the slides in a 175 would have likely caused some injury....

ShutUpDonnie

But.. but.. What about MY TIME??

TravelingZoomer

The compensation is that you didn’t die or get seriously injured by the professional and well-trained actions of the flight crew

Eastbay1K

Sounds (or smells) like something I've experienced, apparently remedied in time to avoid anything more adverse, with a cockpit comment about what we're smelling and that it would clear up. More likely than not, this was on UA many years ago.

pmblinn

My boss and I received compensation (albeit un-requested) from Delta for an engine failure out of ATL. He got 40k pesos, I 20k. He has forever since reminded me that his life is worth twice mine.

sltlyamusd

Not wanting to speculate but this does sound most likely. I recall at least one other AS emergency evac at SEA caused by the exact same issue.

notquiteaff

Your compensation is a story you can tell friends and family that most of us can’t.

My story is a UA 747 that lost an engine somewhere over Tahoe on the way to LHR and we got to fly around in circles for a while dumping fuel before doing an emergency landing (very non-exciting except for the fire trucks they rolled out).

It’s priceless.

PDXPremier

This isn't something I think justifies a pro-active compensation request on the part of the passenger since it was an unforeseen emergency and thankfully everyone made it out safely. However, given the potential stress of smelling smoke in the cabin, having to evacuate the aircraft, and potentially creating a significant delay due to mis-connects, etc., I think it would be totally appropriate for AS to pro-actively send out some token such as a $50 e-cert in response to the incident. They are not compensating passengers for some loss that was caused by the fault of AS, they are simply saying "we're sorry this happened to you and we appreciate your business". I remember receiving a $250 e-cert from UA because of a inoperable video screen on a Hawaii flight.....I would think evacuating from a cabin filling with smoke, being asked to leave your belongings, and wondering what's going on is more stressful from the passenger standpoint than a broken video screen.