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Comment by fatnoah | Hacker News Reader

>Reading this while sitting in a 787-9 that's just about to take off isn't very comforting.

In a similar vein, that reminds me of the time I was stuck in my seat on plane that had pushed away from the gate, but was just sitting on the tarmac because the captain "didn't like the look of an engine indication". About 45 minutes in to just waiting there, there was a commotion as everyone's phones/Blackberries started chirping. Apparently, some plane had just landed in the Hudson river.

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I was on a direct flight from Heathrow to DFW when the captain announced that we needed to divert to Ottawa because "Air Traffic Control was down". We landed safely and were the first flight to re-enter US airspace two days later on 9/13.

When things go sideways, keeping everyone calm is a big part of the job, even if it means fibbing a bit.

I was on a flight to Los Angeles when the Captain reported that the entire Southwestern US had lost contact with air traffic control, and we diverted IIRC to Chicago. The Captain said he didn’t know what was going on, and we called someone in LA using the overpriced airplane phone to confirm that LA still existed.

The Captain handled the diversion very nicely. He said we were welcome to deplane and walk around, and that he would give us a 15 minute warning when it was time to get back on the plane. Awhile later, the announcement came over the PA, we got back on the plane, and went to LA.

The root cause was timestamp overflow! https://m.slashdot.org/story/49885

I remember the JetBlue aircraft that was having trouble getting its landing gear down. It struck me that they had live TV. So the passengers could watch live news video of their own plane trying to get the gear down.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBlue_Flight_292

Edit: Interesting tidbit from the Wikipedia page:

"Screenwriter Zach Dean was also on the plane, and while contemplating his mortality resolved to write a script about mortality (which eventually became the film Deadfall)."

Well, that's terrifying!

Did your flight eventually take off? Was the captain legitimately concerned about an indication, or was he just aware of the emergency declaration of Flight 1549 and waiting to see how it played out?

The time between the beginning and end of the 1549 emergency was far less than 45 minutes.

I'm aware; there was certainly lag time between the event & the reporting, though. It's relatively likely that the PIC knew of the emergency declaration 10-20 minutes before it was triggering push notifications on devices. Regardless, I'm legitimately curious what the outcome of his flight was that day.

I'd bet the average pilot does not get any notification in advance of the general public unless they are in the midst of an incident in progress, and then it would be ATC notifying them. Even then, probably just enough info to keep them safe.

So unless they were actually at the airport where 1549 took off, it's possible they didn't even hear about it until the evening news.

In emergency situations, flights on the ground are held on the ground, planes in the air get pushed to a holding pattern or diverted depending on need. ATC wants to give the plane in distress clear air to make the maneuvers needed without worrying about traffic.

We eventually went back to the terminal and departed about 5 hours behind schedule. I'm not sure if we got a new plane or the engine issue on the original plane got resolved.

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