Just before my Delta flight back to New York from New Orleans was about to take off yesterday I was de-planed. It was the first time it has ever happened to me but luckily all the other passengers seemed old hands at it so I shuffled off the plane doing what they did.
Being de-planed is a bit like being demobbed or de-robed but without the shame. It happens when you’ve boarded a plane and for some reason the airline decides that they want you all off again. In our case it was because the tiny jet engine at the back of the plane responsible for the air conditioning and lighting had ‘flamed out’ – a rather evocative term that I suggest the captain should have thought twice before using.
An hour later a maintenance engineer certified that it was safe for us to fly without the ‘flamed-out’ engine and we were re-planed. The captain referred to it as a ‘minor inconvenience’ and promised to try and make up some time on the way to La Guardia.
I think I speak for all the other passengers when I say that we just wanted to get to New York without one of the bigger jets ‘flaming out.’
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hehe, I’ve been on flights a couple of times where they have just made you sit there while they attempt to fix whatever is wrong with the plane. The worst is when you look out the window and see a group of engineers underneath one of the engines all looking over what appears to be an instruction book! Or when they don’t tell you at all what is wrong and you are left wondering whether you are going to drop out of the sky or not!
Clearly you should have stuck with the taxis … did you get the pilots country of origin details or is that just silly?