A Cathay Pacific flight to New York carrying 184 passengers quickly returned to Vancouver after takeoff on Saturday night when passengers smelled smoke. Then it did it again.
The flight was cancelled after the second failed attempt, and the airline began finding accommodation and alternative bookings for passengers on the troubled flight.
"Shortly after the first takeoff, I had smelt the smell of something burning. I assumed others had smelt it as well," Cheyenne Lau wrote to The Vancouver Sun on an electronic tip line.
Lau, a 24-year-old architecture student who was headed to New York City for school on the twice-aborted flight, said in a phone call later that she thought nothing of it at first.
"I knew something was wrong only when the seat back display screen changed from showing '4 hours and 15 minutes' to landing, to '15 minutes' to landing."
"Only when we landed, a few minutes later, they had told us we had landed," she said.
Lau said she finally got back to her Vancouver home at 3 or 4 a.m. and will fly out on Cathay Pacific tonight.
Speaking on behalf of Cathay Pacific, Jennifer Pearson said flight CX888, scheduled to leave at 9:55 p.m. Saturday, left at 10:06 p.m. and returned about 10 minutes later.
Pearson confirmed "there was a strong smell on board" the aircraft that raised an alarm for the captain, but she couldn't elaborate on the nature of the odour or characterize it.
The Vancouver airport Authority said passengers reported smelling smoke.
The plane, a Boeing 777-300ER, was checked out and deemed safe. It left again two hours later, at 12:28 a.m. -- but then had to turn back again.
"The smell was still detected in the cabin, so the captain returned the aircraft for a second time," Pearson said.
"I didn't smell it the second time," Lau said, adding: "It was a really odd flight."
Lau said there was little communication between the crew and passengers during the ordeal.
"Many passengers were confused on what was happening on board," she said.
The flight landed at 1:20 a.m. without incident, but emergency crews on the ground had been notified for what Pearson described as a "standby landing."
Passengers were kept on the plane for at least another 20 to 30 minutes, Lau said, even as firefighters boarded it.
"I was just thinking: 'If there is a possible fire, I want to get off the plane,'" she said.
Pearson said the delay at the gate was due to hotel bookings being made for the passengers.
"They were kept on board for an hour while those arrangements were being made," Pearson said.
Cathay's own engineers inspected the plane on Sunday. A spokesman for Canada's Transportation Safety Board said Nav-Can sent out an alert about the incident and the TSB would wait to find out more from Cathay's inspection team today.
The smell of smoke in a plane could mean many things -- from a bird in the engine to a malfunction in the operation of the kitchen, said the TSB's Bill Yearwood.
In November, a Londonbound British Airways flight turned back and made an emergency landing at YVR after the crew became aware of an "engine surge."
Earlier this week, Cathay Pacific issued an alert that its flights from Vancouver to New York could be delayed or cancelled due to snowstorms in the eastern United States.
On Dec. 28, a Cathay Pacific flight between Vancouver and New York landed during a snowstorm, but passengers were stuck in the plane on the tarmac for 11 hours before the plane docked at a gate.
Last May, after RCMP learned of a potential threat, a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Vancouver was escorted in Canadian airspace by two CF-18 fighter jets before landing safely.
-------------------------------Read more Aviation News http://www.vancouversun.com/
View Model Aircraft
No comments:
Post a Comment