Safety q. about a flight in 1999
 

Hi, I'm new to this site and just wished I had known about it earlier. I am a linguist by trade, and an enthusiast about flying in general-if not for something that happened in 1999, on September 10, on a flight with (then) Air Uk, who had just before my flight been taken over by KLM uk. I had an emergency landing on that flight and have suffered from severe fear of flying since. It has not kept me from flying, although I need medication in order not to panic.

My question now, does anyone in this forum remember anything about this flight (operated out of FRA, by KLM uk, a Fokker 100)?

We ran into trouble c. 10 minutes after take-off, when the cabin started to fill with acrid smoke, and the oxygen masks were released. we promptly returned to FRA, to land on runway 18 ("Startbahn West", just to hear the fire brigade maing jokes about us actually landing on a runway that was only used for take-off!)

Well, ever since I have been wondering about what actually happened (someone said "the ac blew up", but I never got confirmation of this) and how serious it was. It be grateful if anyone still knows anything about this incident.

Cheers,
Alexandra from Germany (who actually wanted to become a pilot way back before she got too myopic, and no one would want someone to pilot a plane with -8 dpt....)

Hm....I tried the AAIB, who referred me to the CAA, and both have nothing on that particular flight- I think that's weird, it SHOULD be recorded somewhere, shouldn't it? Does anyone know if, because the emergency landing was at FRA, there are German authorities I could ask?

you could try the bundesanstalt fuer flugunfalluntersuchung http://www.bfu-web.de/

many reports are available on-line as PDFs

Thanks for the link, unfortunately there's nothing either. I always thought events like that HAD to be recorded or reported somewhere?

I wasn't in Germany at the time (as that particular flight was the one that should have brought me to my new job in Britain), but back then I told my parents and friends to look out for something, but it didn't even end up in small print anywhere- that's what I still find very strange. It's like it never happened, which is not very comforting at all.