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JFK Plane Scare Drives Passengers To Drink
By
Jaya Saxena
Published Nov 22, 2010
Modified Nov 22, 2010
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By
Jaya Saxena
Published Nov 22, 2010
Modified Nov 22, 2010
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Though all 193 passengers and 11 crew members on yesterday's Moscow-bound Delta flight 30 were unharmed after the plane was forced to dump fuel and land back at JFK because of a blown engine, most of them were pretty spooked about the incident. Irine Dokuchaeva of Moscow told the Post, "We felt [a bump], and the airplane stopped going up. It was flying straight. The captain said, ‘There is a problem, and we need to dump fuel. Don’t worry if you see fuel in the window'...Everybody stayed calm, but everybody wanted to drink something." Which would be the only way to stay calm if you saw your plane's fuel through the window.
The controller says he saw "what he thinks could have been a flame followed immediately by a good-sized plume of black smoke," but FAA spokeswoman Holly Baker said there was no fire involved in the incident. Investigators are still determining whether the engine failure on the Boeing 767 was caused by a bird strike, as the pilot claims. But PA police sources say that so far there is no evidence of a bird strike and that it appears that one of the engine’s compressors may have stalled.
The passengers all boarded another flight to Moscow about two hours after the plane landed, but the pilot said he would sit this flight out. "I’m done for the night," he said. "We’ll let someone else have the excitement." The pilot so far has remained anonymous. C'mon man, don't you want your own t-shirts?
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Jaya Saxena
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