In 2006 I took a flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town. Around half an hour into the flight, the captain made the following announcement:
[INDENT]"Ladies and gentlemen, for those of you sitting on the right hand side of the aeroplane, you may notice that one of our slats has moved out of position. Don’t worry about it, we are trained to handle such situations.”[/INDENT]
I was seated on the left side of the plane, but went over to take this picture:
[ATTACH=full]165628[/ATTACH]
Thereafter, the plane descended to 20,000 feet, where they recycled the flaps and slats, and the offending slat retracted. We then climbed to cruising altitude again.
However, it wasn’t long after when it looked like this:
[ATTACH=full]165629[/ATTACH]
The captain then announced that they would not be able to retract it in the air and that we would continue at around half the normal speed and at 20,000 feet on to Cape Town. Everybody had to sit down and was not allowed to get up for the remainder of the flight.
It was quite a strange experience, flying slowly in a 737-800, and at such a low altitude.
We eventually landed in Cape Town around an hour late with all the fire engines and ambulances awaiting us on the runway. Thankfully, nothing happened and we all got out much relieved.
I can just imagine how much right rudder the pilots would have had to apply to counter the roll effect of that slat
1998, fresh out of high school and still young and foolish.
I climbed atop a workbench and tried to balance on this Stanley wood plane.
I regret it to this day.
[ATTACH=full]165633[/ATTACH]
In a flight from Nairobi to Eldoret, the guy seated on the aisle seat, tried selling me plots from Nairobi, Nakuru, trans nzoia and Uasin Gishu counties, when I checked out his number with the DCIO office, it turned out he wasn’t that clean.
