White Knuckles Over YXS

Sunday, January 21, 2007 07:46 PM

Passengers on an Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Prince George had an unexpected and unwelcome delay Sunday morning because the plane’s landing gear failed to operate.

Flight 8203, a Dash 8 twin engine propellor driven craft (similar to the photo at right) left Vancouver at about 10:15 this morning with about 35 passengers on board. It had to circle the Prince George Airport for about 40 minutes before finally landing at about 12:15.

Two ambulances were called to the airport to standby.

Passengers remained calm throughout the ordeal, although some admit to having white knuckles. According to airline personnel, when a problem arises with the landing gear, the pilot has a number of procedures to go through while maintaining a holding pattern, usually in radio consultation with the mechanical ground crew.

The flight crew was finally able to solve the problem and make the plane’s landing gear descend, prompting one relieved passenger to shout "Hooray!" as the plane landed.

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Posted on Sunday, January 21, 2007 07:46 PM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: thereasonableman on January 21 2007 9:07 PM

No big deal... with all the snow on the ground, even if they didn't get the landing gear down, it just would have been the funnest toboggan ride ever !

Posted by: thereasonableman on January 21 2007 9:50 PM

An aside...with all the controversy about the runway extension and airport expansion, I think the call sign letters for the airport are very appropriate indeed....Why Excess ?

Posted by: Gofaster on January 22 2007 4:29 AM

Way to go ground and flight crew...
jobs well done...

Posted by: lunarguy on January 22 2007 7:02 AM

This does bring up an interesting question. With all the concentration on extending the runway, have the auxiliary services been included in the plan, like fire and rescue ? Will they be getting some additional personnel to actually man the equipment ? In the case above two ambulances for potentially 37 injured seems a bit under staffed to say the least.
When the Airport was handed over to local authorities one of the first group of people laid off was the fire fighters at the airport.

Posted by: owl on January 22 2007 9:00 AM

lunarguy ...

One maybe should look even further than just the airport's own capacity.

What is the city's capacity to handle a crash situation should planes with over 200 passengers ever land here and there are a large proportion of critically injured survivors? Can the ER handle them? Are there places at the airport which are set up to receive injured for triage and even treatment if need be? Do we have enough medical people knowledgeable in the types of injuries which would likely be sustained?

Once we have answered that, we should look at other emergency situations in the city which could put a few hundred or even thousand people into harms way due to a chemical spill and/or fire from hazardous goods travelling through the city? Have we ever been told, as citizens of this community, how safe or unsafe we are compared to other communities? How safe is safe? What are the standards?

Maybe we need a CitySafe program.

Posted by: owl on January 22 2007 9:04 AM

BTW, the above report says that two ambulances were called to the airport to stand by. I assume they were from outside the airport. I do not know whether there are emergency paramedics at the airport. Maybe someone else knows.

Posted by: lunarguy on January 22 2007 11:49 AM

Owl,

Totally agree with you. Given that the Hospital has had to call code "Gridlock" or whatever term they call it so many times all ready in 2007 I don't have much faith they could actually handle an emergency of more than 10 or people. I know, you set up an emergency triage area ( where during the winter ? ) outside of the ER to get things underway, etc.

Posted by: thereasonableman on January 22 2007 12:57 PM

CrashSafe.

Posted by: Harbinger on January 22 2007 11:06 PM

All the good airline mechanics workin' on oil rigs Alberta too? More money, I betcha! Jest wunderin'.