Equipment problems on 2433
 

I was on CO 2433 yesterday (April 1, 2007) and had a unique experience. We were about halfway to our destination (CRW) when I realized we had turned south... I thought that maybe they were going around a storm. 30 minutes later and the pilot comes over the intercom and announces we are on our way back to IAH because the AHORs (Artificial horizon) had gone out and since there was a storm at CRW he didn't want to become disoriented.

We turned around and were on the ground in Houston for about 10 minutes getting the part and gas and were right back up in the air... I didn't mind it but everyone around me seemed perturbed. Apparently they didn't understand where the destination was ;) :p

That's a CRJ for ya..... ;)

1. You were hardly to your destination. You barely entered Louisiana.
2. IAH was the closest place to fix the problem.

I wasn't really complaining. We were about halfway to our destination, almost 400 miles when we turned around.

I had no problem with them turning the plane around. I fly (as in I have a pilot's license) and I understand what it means to fly without the artificial horizon, so to me, turning around was fine.

The other folks on the plane thought the world was coming down around them. The guy next to me said "It's 'cause they couldn't fill it, they canceled it when they realized it wasn't making money"... ;) I laughed. I was making jokes such as "does this mean I get another mini turkey sandwich?" and "I hope those miles we just flew count towards OP, I mean, this is an H ticket"

No, you were over northwest Louisiana according to the FlightAware link you posted...about 200 miles from IAH.

I wonder what went out...those planes have a computerized attitude indicator for both the pilot & copilot plus a a regular attitude indicator for backup.

A long while back we were on initial approach for AUS and the headlight on the front landing gear didn't come on (we had already spent an hour in IAH getting it "fixed"). Rather than land at AUS we went back and landed at IAH so they could move us to a different plane and then fly us back to AUS. People were pretty upset, but mostly because it was 1am, and it seemed silly that they couldn't fix the light in AUS, as landing was going to happen either way. Of course, from CO's perspective, their maintenance facility is IAH, so for them to get a crew and spare parts out to actually fix the issue in the remote airport would have been very bad.

Well, technically that is an ExpressJet ERJ-135 flight. So we can't blame it on the evil Canadair RJ this time.