Digger escapes Vegas by the skin of his teeth!

[Digger[NJLP]]

Well I'm back from Vegas and boy do I have a story for ya!

I'm not going to go in to the four days of partying since the old adage, "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" is very relevant.

But!

Sunday at 1:50 PM we board our Continental flight home to Newark. The plane taxi's to the runway and proceeds on to takeoff. In the process of take off I am having a conversation with the couple next to me and we suddenly get thrown forward, we hear a large bang and the plane, fish tailing down the runway, screeches to a halt. The pilot comes on the intercom and annouces that the engines were not producing enough thrust and we had to abort the take off. He then says we are going to taxi back to the terminal so we can look at the engines.

The pilot increases thrust to taxi off the end of the runway and the plane is moving like its going over 10 foot boulders. So we stop a foot off the runway and the pilot comes on and states;
"It appears that we have five flat tires, the fire and rescue team will be coming out to inspect the plane, but we will be disembarking here on the taxi way and you will be bused back to the terminal."

The fire guys show up but for 10 minutes they stay 100 feet away using laser tempature readers to check the heat on the tires.

When we are finally able to debark on to the buses we got a good look at all eight tires on the back of the 757-300 and they were are all melted heapes of smoking rubber.

So the bottom line is the pilot saved are asses.

Continental gave us a 48 dollar Super 8 voucher for the night and we are stuck there till Monday.

That night on FOX Las Vegas the report is Continental debarked the plane, put us on a different plane, and sent us home. Not!

Monday comes along and were back at the airport and the Continental desk assures me that the plane we are flying back is not the same plane.
We then board the plane and the stewardess tells us, it is the same plane and the engineers found nothing wrong. They replaced the tires and breaks and sent us on our way.

So off we go praying that the plane takes off and lands and the engines don't fail in mid air.

Obviously we made it, but just another example of hell in the air.
Lets just hope Tome doesn't have the same experience I did, he got there on the Sunday I was supposed to leave.

Digg this story!!

[[FETT]Cupcake]

Welcome to the aviation industry...and yes, the pilots did save your bacon.

[coold8]

Hehe, Cupcake I just remembered you were a ATC controller for the airport. That must have been fun for you digger! Well I gave you the digg (and so did the tire, except into the ground)!