whew... glad to be in one piece

[jay]

I nearly didn't make it here, tonight... severe wind shear in a thunderstorm caught our 737 on final into Atlanta and slammed us down toward the ground. The pilot reacted and hit full throttle... we were tail-down and the engines were shaking and some people were screaming... we popped out of it. My guess is that it knocked us down from about 500 feet AGL down to 100-150. We were off-line for the runway, way too low and engines high, so we did a go-around. First commercial go-around I'd been on in a few years. We were also down to our last half-hour of fuel, given lots of in-flight holds. Just as well that we weren't heavier, I guess (wry grin). ATC turned the approach directions around 180 degrees, and when we finally landed (much better, still gusty) the passengers broke out in cheering and applause. We'd dodged one... I congratulated and thanked the co-pilot on my way out.

We were already 3+ hours late leaving San Jose.... I was supposed to have been here at 8:30pm. So I'm tired, besides coming down off of near-miss adrenaline. Dinner was a cookie and some mixed nuts.

Otherwise... Easter was good, at home. David and Kevin hunted candy and plastic eggs that I'd hidden the previous night, patgreene made a nice breakfast, and church was overflowing, probably 300 at the 9am kid's service. I missed having traditional hymns.... needed something more joyous and symbolic. Bubblegum second-hand Christian-rock is OK for outreach and ordinary time at an informal service, but IMO is just too surface-level, too shallow for Easter.

Comments

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, that's scary!

Last time we had something like that happen was on Northwest, too, coming into Minneapolis. We were almost down (like maybe 10 yards from the runway - no joke) and all of a sudden we were nose up and engines straining. Apparently there was a small plane who hadn't cleared the runway, and the pilot decided he wasn't going to be out of the way fast enough.

My sister-in-law about lost it. She's afraid of flying as it is. She maintained because she was holding her 20-month old, was sitting next to her 5 year old, and her 8 year old was in the row with me and my brother. She about took the armrest between her and Dan off, though.

But at least our pilot had control. Yours, man, that's got to be nervewracking for the crew.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

This time, I was on Delta going into Atlanta. But I've had the go-around-avoid-collision experience several times... a couple of times in a commercial flight (once in Atlanta, once on Continental in Houston) and two or three times as a light aircraft pilot myself. At least in those cases, one can *see* the problem, it isn't an invisible wall.