Some observations from a grateful blogger:
That’s when the flight attendent came through. “We’re having a little electrical trouble with the PA. The captain thinks it’s important the he communciate with the flight crew, so we’re going to make an unscheduled landing at O’Hare. We’ll get a mechanical crew on it ASAP. It’s NOT an emergency, it’s just unscheduled.”
I’ve been through worse landings. The plane bounced once, maybe twice and then the brakes went on, hard. Really, I’ve been through worse. But when I looked out the window, a bunch of heavy emergency equipment was heading our way. Fast. I didn’t think it was for us at first, but it was.
The flight attendents came through again saying that there’d been some kind of electrical problem. The pilot landed the plane the old fashioned way, in an odd angle on the grass. I could see tarmac and runway under the wing on my right, lots of grass to the left. And loads of blinky lights, firemen in heavy gear…
We sat for 10, maybe 20 minutes. The air conditioning was dead, the plane got really hot, really fast. The flight attendent told us we were waiting for the ramps, they’d be taking us by bus to the terminal. But we couldn’t get off the plane until they turned the engines off and the left one wasn’t shutting down. The fire trucks shuffled around outside, the firemen stood nearby with extinguishers that looked ridiculously small next to the huge plane wing. The pilot walked through the cabin, looking dead serious and a little old, asking if everyone was okay. He stood chatting with a group in the back of the plane, a round of applause went up as he headed back up the aisle to the cockpit.
No one panicked or freaked out. The flight attendents were like angels, perfectly calm and in good humor. The passengers sat and joked, I snapped pictures of the fire crew out the window and as they boarded the plane. Finally the left engined whirled to a halt and a cheer went up in the cabin.
“Unscheduled Landing” | nerd's eye view