Ask me about US Air flight 1882

what about it? Was it a routine flight?

Was it one of those regional turbo prop contraptions?

OK...spill it OP.

What was the passenger manifest?

What did you see?

What did you hear?

What was different than normal air travel?

attention whore

I am flying in from Puerto Rico. Change planes in Charlotte. The plane I was to take to Richmond originated in Kansas City.

We taxi out to the runway and the plane makes an early turn onto the runway, cutting in front of five other aircraft in line. The captain never said, "There are 5 planes in front of us and we will take off as soon as we can get clearance.." You know, how they let you know how many planes are in front of you.

No, we wheel around onto the runway and immediately power up and take off. My seat mate and I commented about this but thought nothing of it. We took off at 10:11 pm.

We land in Richmond at 11:10pm and taxi towards the terminal and then back out towards the runway. The captain says,"the control tower has asked us to move away from the terminal and i can't get anyone from US Air. I will let you know as soon as I can find out what is going on."

We look out at the terminal and see a bunch of fire engines. the plane taxis to the main runway and as it turns I can clearly see a line of emergency vehicles across the runway as we turn. the plane stops with the vehicle immediately behind us.

we can now see police vehicles at the national guard hangars to the east and we continue to track the emergency vehicles.

the captain says that there was a 'nebulous' phone call.

we don't know if it is the terminal or us that is the concern.

we sit in the plane on the tarmac for almost an hour when the captain says 'there is a situation'.

so, we move from nebulous to a situation. i am recording various segments with my camera. i am downloading the video, right now.

woah interesting... Nothing exciting happened to me when I left charlotte douglas airport.

Well, attention whore, what the HELL IS THE SITUATION????

Spill it, man... you're worse than a teen-age virgin girl at a sock hop... spill it!!!!

Glad you and the other passengers are safe OP.

Did you have a rum and coke between flights?

I am not an attention whore. You will see this on the news, tomorrow.

After two hours the captain says,'we are being asked to debark on the tarmac.'

we start to collect our carry on items and the captain says, 'we are evacuating the plane, leave all of your items on the plane.'

I recorded this last message. i continued to record as i left the plane and walked down the stairs to the tarmac. there is one airport cop, some ground crew and an airport official.

while i am filming, the aiport official comes up to me and starts bitching me out about filming the event. she says that i am violating federal laws.....numerous ones.

You didn't have to relinquish your video did you OP?

[link to www2.timesdispatch.com]

sorry for the interruptions. i am checking the progress of my downloads.

we had seen several other planes land before we got the order to evacuate. this was important because that told us it was not the terminal. it was us.

someone from out of state had called to make a threat. the cop on the tarmac told us that it was not a credible threat.

they still made us debark without belongings.

they shuttled us out to the terminal while they searched the entire plane and all luggage.

when we got to the terminal, news crews from the three major stations were there. one of them filmed the display of my camera while i replayed some of the video.

there was all kinds of talk among the passengers about who knew what and when. we never saw TSA. we only saw the one cop. they never told us what was happening.

the airport manager talked to the news crews. one of the passengers was blasting him because there was a threat and we were confined within the aircraft for two hours, exposed to the threat while they pussyfooted around.

why didn't they immediately remove us to a safer point?

why did the plane take off out of sequence from Charlotte?

where was homeland security?

why was there no US Air officials present?

we didn't get off the plane at 12:45. It was closer to 1:45. That Times Dispatch article is a little early and light.

Other airport workers who had been asked to leave the terminal returned and told us that they were told our plane had hit a fuel truck on landing.

Me thinks there is some skulduggery afoot.

did you receive a little bag of peanuts?

the flight is so short they don't even supply drinks.

we didn't get our luggage until 4:30.

look, i just thought that i would share something newsworthy with you guys.

there was probably just a darked skinned individual that took their shoes off. nothing to see here.

Thanks for sharing, Slick.

With all that is going on it must have been very scary Slick. Glad you are OK and thanks for letting us know.

actually was not scary.

thinking about how they left us on that plane for two hours kinda makes me sick.

ANY threat is treated as if it were real. why leave us in such close proximity to a threat for so long?

they did say it was not credible, nebulous. but they still searched the entire plane and its contents.

we land at 11, get off the plane after 1, get our shit back at 4:30.

more pissed than anything

why leave the passengers on the plane for two hours?

[link to www.facebook.com]

Here is my condensed version. A pleasure meeting you last night. An interesting note in one of the news stories I read today said that US Air had actually received the threat just minutes before the plane took off from the KC airport. If I find this to be true, Things will get fun cause I was under this threat for over 5 hours!

Kenny

this guy slick was a complete asshole during the ordeal. Thought he was being funny, but his immaturity made an unbearable situation all the more unbearable.

inmaturity

People make choices about how to handle stress in their lives. Comedy is one way for some. It may not have been to your liking, but your way of handling it would not be the first choice of others. I am sure you realized this and decided to hang out with people who shared in your style of dealing with stress, as we all should. There is nothing immature about this kind of behavior, it is purely instinctive.

What is immature is calling someone out on a website and not signing your real name.

People wonder why those who can are now buying "NET JET" or "Marquis Jets" cards up left and right! And if you fly a LOT they do actually make sense financially, too. On one of the "personal" cards you get "X" number of hours in the air, your spouse or S/O flies free if there is space available and there nearly always is, and you fly your route, your time schedule and because the planes are much smaller than commercial jets, you can get in and out of smaller, cheaper airports. These smaller airports are often not only smaller, but usually vastly more convenient, too. A neighbor of ours uses the Net Jets services all the time, and if he drives down to Sky Harbor in Phoenix, it takes him about 1 hour, plus time to park, check in, etc. If he uses Net Jets, he can drive down to Scottsdale Airpark's airport - park in five minutes, and be on the tarmac boarding twenty minutes after leaving his home!

It's true with Net Jets and Marquis Jets the "entry" fee is about $50k worth of hours. But with present airline fees, if you're traveling on business and cannot get deep discounts, you can spend that same $50k running back and forth to NY/LA/NY a few times in First Class. When you're an exec and flying first, the airlines do not give a shit about delays, or this kind of "let them park over there" for three hours mentality, all the while they try to find the drunken partying station manager for USAir who's out on a bender or in the NoTell Motel fucking a stew who comes in every Thursday night who gives great head and swallows! (Ask any of the guys who've flown with her for the last fifteen years or so.)

Thanks for the kind words, Kenny. It was a stressful situation but I didn't want to sit there and worry about what was happening.

I was surprised to see that two other people on that flight actually come here to this forum.

It turns out that they knew about the threat before we took off from Charlotte.

Just a not to anyone who flies. Realize that if anything happens to your flight you will be sacrificed. That is what made so many people angry. We were exposed to the threat for three hours before they tried to get us off of the plane. Why didn't they pull us off to an isolated area at Charlotte and evacuate? They let us take off and expose a much larger number of people to the threat while we flew over them.

To the AC who didn't like the comic relief that successfully distracted other passengers and gave them some laughs....I hope that you can find a way to be happy in this life.

Thanks for the cigarettes, Kenny.

Good story! Some people on here are only happy if you can prove the world is going to end!

Ha ha, what are the chances that three GLPers would be on the same flight?

Not only that, a flight under threat.