Just in time for opening week of Major League Baseball, American Airlines struck out with three inflight disasters that forced AA aircraft to make emergency landings and delayed passengers for a day.
While the focus has been on Southwest for the dramatic fuselage rupture over the weekend, United had even a more threatening, if less dramatic (and without video), problem with a loss of instrumentation and AA had three back-to-back-to-back incidents that even make me pause.
Strike One! passengers were passing out and feeling woozy on a flight from Reagan-National in DC to Chicago O’Hare. The pilot had to make an emergency landing
A plane was diverted to an Ohio airport after two flight attendants reported dizziness and four passengers fainted.
American Airlines spokesman Ed Martelle says the pilot dropped oxygen masks when the dizziness was reported Friday morning.
Dayton International Airport Director Terrence Slaybaugh says the pilot alerted the airport that some passengers were complaining about air quality.
Martelle says all 140 people on Flight 547 from Reagan National in Washington, D.C., to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport walked off the Boeing 737. He says two were taken to a hospital. Their conditions are not known.
More details from the Dayton Daily News.
“Halfway through the flight, the woman in the row behind us … we thought she had a seizure,” Saull said.
They quickly learned that woman and another woman next to her had passed out. Then some passengers who were 10 rows in front of the Saulls started complaining about smelling fumes.
“I didn’t smell anything,” she said. “Other passengers were complaining about being light-headed … Five minutes later, they were announcing they were going to drop the masks.”
Saull said she thought the passengers were pretty calm despite the situation.
Strike Two! A flight on Friday night struck its tail upon take-off for Chile. AA 945 scheduled to fly from Dallas-Fort Worth to Santiago, Chile, returned to DFW shortly after takeoff when the pilot suspected the tail strike,
Passenger Rita May praised the crew for keeping the passengers informed on all developments.
“They did a fabulous job on what was to me a very panicky group,” she said in a telephone interview from Santiago, Chile.
May, who said she takes that flight often, said she saw nothing unusual about the takeoff – although in retrospect she said she thought the takeoff may have been a little steep. She said she briefly smelled the scent of fuel fumes before the scent dissipated. The landing was exciting, she said, “because we had so much fuel that there was a lot of momentum.”
Touchdown felt normal, but there was an unusually long, slow deceleration past lines of emergency vehicles, she said. Passengers seemed to keep their anxieties under control, she said.
Strike Three! An AA flight from Boston to St. Thomas had to make an emergency landing in New York at JFK airport because of pressurization problems with the aircraft. This time no one could see out the roof of the aircraft as in the recent Southwest depressurization incident, but it was severe enough to get on the ground immediately.
Flight 883 with 140 passengers aboard landed about 10 a.m. Sunday. No injuries were reported. Airlines spokesman Jim Faulkner said the passengers were placed on another aircraft and went on to their destination.
He said officials would inspect the aircraft — a Boeing 757 — to determine what happened.
Photo: ©Leocha
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
