Found myself thinking about a few instances where I was on flights that had some mechanical problem and was curious to hear other people's stories about what has broken on an airplane and caused your flight to delay. Here are a few stories of mine:
February 2000: TWA Flight# 12 JFK-SJU on a 767-200, we pushed back from T5 gate 25 and started up one engine when the pilot announced that they could not start the other engine. We ended up taxiing over to the maintenance ramp hardstand area across from the terminal and shutting down where the pilot told us that the valve that directs the air into the starter was stuck and they would have to use a long pole type of tool in order to unstick the valve and hold it until they could get the engine spinning fast enough to start. They tried twice to start the engine before it actually lit, which was pretty cool to listen to. Once started, they did some paperwork and we went on our way. The total delay was around 2 hours.
November 2003: American 667 JFK-SXM on a 757, after deicing we got onto runway 31L, pushed the engines up only to have them throttle back down again. We taxiied back to T9 where maintenance came onboard. Apparently a flight attendant called the flight deck that they heard a suspicious noise coming from below the floor of the passenger cabin. They found that a potable water tank bracket had come loose. 15 minutes to fix, and an hour and a half to do the paperwork with the Tulsa maintenance base. Total delays was 3 hours.
January 2007: American 347 from LGA-ORD on an MD-80, we had a cockpit instrument fail. The flight was delayed about 45 minutes, but I got on as a standby so I was much earlier than I expected anyway.
February 2007: jetBlue 1028 from JFK-SYR on an A320, it started to blizzard for the 10:40PM flight and apparently the bleed valve controlling the wing anti-ice system had gotten stuck. The solution apparently is to manually force the valve open and secure it open so it is continuously running. After an hour for the mechanical and almost two hours in line and deicing, we had a total delay of almost 3.5 hours. Not good for interviews beggining at 8:30AM the next day.
So, tell some of your stories about mechanical issues. This is purely out of curiousity, mostly driven by the TWA incident since I was thinking about T5 recently.
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