Right engine cuts out on my AA Flight to Austin!
Yes, to cap off the worst day I have experienced in my flight history, the right engine on our MD-80 flying from Chicago to Austin failed at 34, 000 feet. This flight was delayed 4 hours so instead of leaving at 8 PM Friday it left at Midnight. Bad Omen right there. About twenty minutes into the flight I saw the cabin lights strobe in a bright flash, felt a lunge then heard “whoosh”. We dropped a bit, though not enough for any to be alarmed or that could normally attributed to turbulence. Most of the passengers were sleep but when I reading. It was apparent we were going slower and going down. I knew that the planes were designed to fly on one engine but you know, I really didn’t want to find out anytime soon.
We started circling around a large city and I asked the guy sitting next to me if he knew what city that was because it was very large and the lights sprawled outward from a center point into a half moon shape. I noticed the Mississippi River so I assumed the only city that large in our current flight path had to be St. Louis. Sure enough we started to lose altitude and moved into position to land. After the pilot made a smooth landing (he is to be commended) we stopped abruptly in the middle of the runway and fire trucks could be seen racing toward us in the distance.
After the fire crews made their once over of the plane,we were cleared to dock at a gate. We were lucky in that they had another plane on standby so that our luggage could be transferred to it and we could board. Once boarded, we took off and I ended up getting to the Austin Airport at 3:45am. It took me 26 hours to get from Ireland to Austin on American Airlines. I’ll leave it at that.
Simply put, I am thankful to God that he kept us safe.
