Entertaining Air

[daveon]

I'm a reasonably good flyer.  I've been doing 100K(ish)+ miles a year for the last half decade so having problems would be a bit of a problem in the job stakes.  However, I can safely say that Friday's take off from Las Vegas rates as the hairiest I've had, including the emergency engine shut down at Tenerife in 1982 with my parents when we were flying Dan Dare.

The signs did not auger well.  The pilot warned of a 60 mph cross wind and "bumps".  I was prepared, just not prepared enough.

First off the take off was pretty sedate.  He didn't throttle the engines too much and we used the whole run way to get off the ground.  The reason being he slammed the throttles up the moment the wheels were up so he could start turning into the wind, which point all hell broke lose for about 4 minutes, while the plane struggled to turn and climb through the winds, between the roller coaster style lurches and the engines protesting it was marvellous.

After that we still had the simply wonderful desert/mountain transition to do which is the other fun thing about leaving Las Vegas, where you find you've gone from 11,000 feet to about 6,000 in a couple of seconds and the air quality changes.

That was mild in comparison.

Didn't help the lady who had the panic attack and needed oxygen after take off though.

Comments

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Very glad I didn't have those problems in my recent travels! I suspect that Space Camp might have been good preparation...

[daveon.livejournal.com]

LOL - we did seem to have less problems landing our cabriolet shuttle than Alaska had with a fairly conventional 737-400 :)

I suspect the Simulator might have had something to do with it...

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Yikes!

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

Yikes! My worst was nothing like as bad as that, just a lot of turbulence at Washington Dulles. I really enjoyed landing and take-off of my one trip so far to Las Vegas. Landed at night, when you get that wonderful view of the strip all lit up, took off about midday and had a great views of the desert.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

One landing into Las Vegas about fifteen years ago -- it was noon-ish and September so it was hot. My impression from the cheap seats was that the pilot was having trouble getting the plane to actually land on the tarmac what with the hot air rising off the blacktop lifting it back up again. We turned off the runway on the last taxiway still going at a good lick and the plane tipped up on two wheels, which is not a good thing on a tricycle...

My worst-ever landing? The pilot declared an emergency and landed the ancient chartered TriStar on Gander's 2km-long military-grade runway as he had no functional flaps. Looking it up later I found the no-flaps landing speed for a TriStar is about 240km/hr at sea-level. Wheee!