QANTAS: A Great Week (Finally) But Then Crashing Back To Reality: Two Deplanes in a Single Morning
I'm sitting in the QANTAS club in Melbourne at present. Nothing surprising there for anyone that knows me however I should be in Brisbane.
I was so happy yesterday that I was finally able to write a positive QANTAS blog post as last week's flights were great, really great. But today, I've come crashing back to reality. I was on QF604 to Brisbane this morning after getting up at 4:45am to make the flight. After we boarded, the familiar "we just have this small (in fact I think she said 'tiny') electrical problem that we should have sorted out in a few minutes" came over the PA system. Four engineers later, it was determined that it wasn't a small problem and the 737 was on its way back to the hangar. We deplaned and returned to the club. The flight was cancelled and we were all fitted onto QF608 an hour later.
By then, the fog had rolled in to Melbourne so no incoming flights were happening but outbound flights were ok but with increased spacing. So, after being held at the gate for a while, we pushed back and made our way to the runway. Shortly after, we were back at the terminal. Pitot tubes are used to measure airspeed. They have a heating device to make sure they don't fill up with ice as they then couldn't measure airspeed. Anyone who watches that Air Crash Investigation show has no doubt seen the grave consequences of them not working when that flight was lost after a maintenance guy left tape covering one.
Well, our pitot tube was indicating that it wasn't heating. When we got back to the terminal, they found it was actually hot so the problem must have been the sensor, etc. Regardless, that meant that we all deplaned yet again.
Looks like my spate of electrical problems on QANTAS hasn't come to a close yet. Two deplanings in a day is a new record for me though. And they've just announced that this one is going back to the hangar too.
Recent QANTAS related posts:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/greglow/archive/2007/07/24/what-is-happening-at-qantas.aspx#comments
http://msmvps.com/blogs/greglow/archive/2007/09/23/the-woeful-service-at-qantas-continues.aspx
http://msmvps.com/blogs/greglow/archive/2007/10/09/qantas-the-fun-not-continues.aspx
http://msmvps.com/blogs/greglow/archive/2007/10/20/qantas-last-week-s-score-electrical-staff-needed.aspx
http://msmvps.com/blogs/greglow/archive/2007/11/05/qantas-a-baggage-week.aspx