Flight carrying congress members makes emergency Landing
 

I love the way they report that:

"...after it lost cabin pressure and took a major nosedive..."

How about it took a major nosedive BECAUSE of the loss in cabin pressure. Std op procedure...Gear out and steep descent to 10,000 feet. Trained for all the time.

"after it lost cabin pressure and took a major nosedive Tuesday afternoon." :rolleyes:

Note to readers: "major nosedive" would be a non-technical term used by stupid reporters who don't understand why "major nosedive" took place.

To be accurate, when we have a loss of cabin pressure we perform an emergency descent maneuver which involves pulling the power to idle, deploying the speedbrakes, and lowering the nose in an attempt to reach an altitude of 10,000 feet in the quickest, SAFEST manner possible. It's pretty controlled, and provides you the fastest way to get down to thick, breathable air.

We do one a year in the sim......fairly straightforward maneuver. (In the military, we'd roll the plane over on it's back, deploy the speedbrakes, pull the power to idle, and perform a 5 G pull......which could of course be described as a "major nosedive"....)

I would submit that when you have a cabin depressurization event, reaching 10,000 feet in pronto fashion is in your best interest, and experiencing a "major nosedive" would be an option you'd sign up for.

DRW ;)

Looks like they are scheduled to keep the plane; scheduled to leave MSY for DCA at 1700 (3 minutes from now). Makes me wonder if the O2 masks deployed or not, as it seems that would be a considerable task of putting them all back.

Nah, gum is handed out to all the passengers and after a few chews everyone is instructed to use the gum to stick the masks back in the compartment. Or was it the leftover cheese...

I notice Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee wasn't on the flight. I wonder if CO finally got her to fly a different airline...

http://www.houstonpress.com/1998-05-...s/the-insider/

Takes about an hour to restow the masks. Did that once when the masks were all dropped by an overzealous maintenance guy..... IF however the oxygen generators were activated, then it's a big operation to replace all of them.

There are two scenarios here: One is that the crew noticed the plane was not pressurizing properly as they were climbing....and were able to get down soon enough to 'beat' the masks deploying. The cabin is normally pressurized to around 6 or 8k feet equivalent. We get an alarm around 10k pressure, and the masks deploy around 14k pressure equivalent. In that scenario, the masks will generally not deploy......

The second scenario is the explosive decompression, which is an instantaneous loss of pressure at altitude. The cabin will go from 6k to 'flight level k' in seconds. That is a serious event, and the masks WILL deploy automatically.

The more common event is scenario one. Had it once out of BNA, and we just leveled off at 9,000 feet while we worked the scenario. Regained cabin pressure control manually and proceeded uneventfully to destination.

Aircraft have a cabin outflow valve (located on the aft, left part of the fuselage for you techno-geek enthusiasts) that is full open on the ground, and will modulate closed as we climb. The closure of that valve maintains a certain psi differential, which in turn maintains cabin pressure at a pre-determined altitude. The outflow valve has two controllers which are electric driven motors, and they can also be controlled manually in the event both motors fail.

DRW

Wow... I would love to be the F/A she screamed at regarding a seafood special on a route where specials aren't offered, so I could throw her off the plane. Respect is a two way street, and no one, regardless of income, public status, occupation, etc, has the right to treat another human being in the way that that article describes, and the way that many of my colleagues have described Lee's behavior. America is a democracy, and there are no queens... well, other than a few of my dear F/A friends, haha.

Thanks for the info! Good to know/understand.

I note that they've now removed the "major nosedive" part from the story... :rolleyes:

Other media sources say masks deployed...presumably with O2 flowing!

http://www.khou.com/topstories/stori....7f4faa58.html

If flightaware.com is to be trusted, they were cruising at 39,000ft when the descent started, so based on doobierw's explanation it would make sense that the masks dropped. It also matches the congressman's report that the event lasted ~20min.

The news media are scumbags that will convert a car making a left turn into a harrowing event fraught with danger if it gets tham one more sale or view on the website. Ugh.

Flightaware Data
 

From FL390 at 2:49p to 10,400 ft at 3:03p. Fourteen minutes to descend almost 30,000 feet sounds pretty fast to me.

Glad it's not SOP to pull 5 negative Gs in an airliner...that sounds pretty uncomfortable, and bad for the airframe.:eek:

I've been on several flights recently with Sheila. She's been fine. She wouldn't let me take her bag out of the overhead for her though--needed Al Green (another member of Congress) to do that for her.

Fair enough. But wouldn't the former be considered "major" enough for Mr. & Mrs. Kettle to pooh themselves?