Pilots always have good stories to tell and Guest Writer William "BBall" Ball is no exception.

Read "Folks, we're going to be a little late..." here:
http://www.simhq.com/_air14/air_506a.html

excellent article and story... and nice job.

Great story and well written.. Those highlight reel flights are always firmly implanted into memory.. Thanks for taking us along for the ride..

What was the verdict on the engine..? Fire, false alarm, or something else..?

BeachAV8R

This was an excellent story indeed, thanks to William for sharing this and SimHQ for hosting it! I'll make sure to recommend it to friends. It's rare to have a direct account of these events, and in this case the direct account is combined with a rare talent for writing which reminds me of "Fate is the Hunter". I hope we'll get more articles in this vein on SimHQ!

That story gave me flashbacks. lol What is it about engine #3? That's the one in the tail right?

March 1983, flying out of Atlanta on Sun Country. Just as the wheels left the terra forma it was like a shot gun went off a foot behind my head. I and my wife were in the 3 row from the back. He eased it back down and headed back to the gate. Sat there for 2 hours then taken off the plane. We spent 24 hours in the airport until US Air flew us back to MSP. Never did hear the whole story.

I very much enjoyed that article!

Adrenaline check indeed.

Great article as always brother. Thanks for sharing another one of your "adventures."

Awesome story mate and nice to see job well done

Ring Ring Ding Ding.....Mr. funyy guy hehehe. I would have him push the jet to the gate

So nothing further on what that "nagging feeling" was that they all evidently felt?

Left hanging a little there and while I did enjoy the article I'm not sure why so much emphasis was put on what they thought they forgot. Or did I miss it?

WOW. Awesome story, sir.

"... ruptured bleed-air line"

I enjoyed that very much.

Nate

I was wondering the same thing... so what was forgotten?

Thank you BBall, I'm glad this finished with a pilsner.

Outstanding story! One of the best I've read on SimHQ!

Very nice read indeed. Showing once more that the real deal is at least as exciting as Hollywood if just told right. Also a good job on handling that situation, of course! Big thanks for sharing.

Great story BBall!

As a passenger I've had it once that we returned when during rotate the entire plane started to shake like crazy, and kept vibrating afterwards. That was with a Boeing 747-400, flight from Shanghai Pudong to Schiphol. Half an hour into the flight we started dumping fuel and sometime later landed at Pudong again. Here too no panic although there were screams when the plane seemed to come apart.
Turned out a rod that was supposed to pull the main landing gear door shut had broken off so the door was buffeting in the wind. A new rod was flown in from HongKong and the next day we flew again, this time without problems.

Great article

Great story.
Thx

Nice write up, Bill. Was this ever featured on Frugals? I can't recall. Wouldn't it be nice if a passenger dropped by saying : "I remember that flight! Thank you again, sir!"

But what about the dolphins?

The gas will dissipate before it reaches the ground/sea. As an ex ATC, I have worked several jumbo's that needed to pass gas. My favorite is when the Braniff Pumpkin (large orange B747) lost an engine just after liftoff from DFW on its hop to Hawaii. Needed over an hour to dump down to landing weight. Fixed aircraft and it did the same thing the next day. Always wondered what the cause was. Third day it made it all the way. At the time it was the only B747 making a profit on every flight, of course gas was cheap then.

Lumper

Hey guys,

First of all, thanks for all the kind words! As Griff knows from spending FAR too many hours with me on Ventrilo (and/or in a LAN environment), I tend to be a bit “wordy” with my flying yarns. As long as guod will waste the bandwidth on me, I’ll keep emailing them his way.

And yeah, Beach, it was indeed a ruptured bleed-air line. In fact, I was standing next to the engine cowling (actually Falstar, #2 is on the tail, #3 is on the starboard wing pylon) when they attempted to open it to inspect the engine. The hot bleed air had melted and deformed so much stuff, that they literally had to hook a rope to a pickup truck to pull the cowling open. To say it was a mess would be an understatement.

That nagging feeling? As it turned out, we did indeed cover all the bases (all accidents/incidents are picked apart by the FAA/NTSB and the Training/Safety Department of the airline in question). Ours was no exception, and it was deemed that we did it all “by the book” and were given some “attaboys”. The only reason I even mentioned “the feeling”, was to take the reader to that place emotionally. I would guess that 99% of us have found ourselves at one time or another doing something vitally important, under some ugly stress, and just couldn’t shake that little dude sitting on the shoulder whispering…”you sure you’ve done it all?” I know I’ve had that feeling many times in my life….my wedding day comes to mind….lol.

Joe_stallin…I’m sure the dolphins are doing juuuuuust fine.

lumper….I remember departing behind Braniff’s “Fat Albert” many times back in the early 80’s flying my Swearingin Metroliner. That was quite the site, watching that big, orange behemoth launching toward Honolulu on its daily run. I actually flew with an F/O the other day on the 767, whose dad flew “Fat Albert” for Braniff….lol. Just proved I’m getting old…

JAMF by friend, I’m not sure that I ever submitted this one to Mark. And it would indeed be proof of that “small world” syndrome if what you said actually happened. Side note: I penned a piece about my favorite flight instructor of all time (one Mr. Gordon Shattles…he was the I.P. for my Instrument Rating in college), who tragically perished in a mid-air collision many years ago. Lo and behold, his widow typed his name into a “Google” search window and my article popped up. She made contact with me (20 + years after I had heard of his death), and mentioned that his now grown sons were very pleased to read the piece about their Dad. It made my millennium.

Thanks again guys for all the nice comments.

Have a great day all,

BBall

Excellent read! Thank you very much, sir.

Awesome read. The DC-10 has always been my favourite aircraft ever since I became interested in aviation. Thank you for sharing, well done, and always happy landings!

MAC

That was a great read. I'm glad you made it, otherwise we would never have got to read the story

That was indeed a great read BBall, thank you for writing it!

Fantastic!

Great read.

It was very cool to hear about the sons of your instructor finding the story you wrote about their dad. I am sure that it helped fill in some stories about their dads life that their mother might not have known.


Wheels

Great article indeed! The DC-10 was my first airliner. And what a first! It's big, yet nimble. A real fingertip airplane. The airline I was flying for had an awful record with the thing (a symptom of pulling planes out of the desert on the cheap). My last flight was a maintenance ferry out of Santa Barbara to San Francisco. The airplane that day had THIRTEEN deferrals, one of which was the pressurization system with two inoperative packs, so the flight was planned at 10,000 feet. Hydraulic problems forced our return to Santa Barbara. That was my last flight in the DC-10. Fortunately for the flying public the airline, LeisureAir, had its operating certificate revoked by the FAA. We were only the 4th airline in US history to have that distinction.

Good job, Sir! Always like to read your stories here and on Frugs. More, please!

Fantastic story thanks so much for sharing!