Photo: United Airlines via Getty Images
If United Airlines isn’t dragging people off their planes for no reason, and if they aren’t killing rabbits, they are having a tough time keeping their planes from falling apart.
Earlier this week, 373 people on a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Honolulu probably felt that was it for them as the plane’s engine decided to fall apart while in the air. Pieces of metal from the engine actually fell down below.
Check this out:
that looks bad, plane and simple #ua1175 pic.twitter.com/EKXUxDBw9q
— Erik Haddad (@erikhaddad) February 13, 2018
Holy hell. But don’t worry, United Airlines had quite the statement about this incident:
“Flight 1175 traveling to Honolulu from San Francisco landed safely after the pilots called for an emergency landing because of an issue with the #2 engine. Our pilots followed all necessary protocols to safely land the aircraft. The aircraft taxied to the gate and passengers deplaned normally.”
Um, an issue? Folks, this issue involved almost completely losing one of your engines. Plus, what’s the protocol for something like this?
I don’t see anything about this in the manual #ua1175 pic.twitter.com/yTECg9fxZw
— Erik Haddad (@erikhaddad) February 13, 2018
Everyone on the plane was afraid, passengers later told reporters. The flight crew acted calm, KITV reported, as they walked back to the windows to see for themselves the engine’s cables and red innards exposed to open air. “But they were scared,” one passenger told ABC News. “You could tell from their face.”
When the casing ripped, it sounded like a gunshot, Haley Ebert told the New York Times. She opened her window shade and saw metal flying into the ocean.
“A bolt hit the wing, and it just made this huge bam,” she said.
Then came 40 minutes of terror. When the plane descended over Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in the early afternoon, she and hundreds of others pressed their hands and heads to the seats in front of them. The flight crew chanted: “Brace, brace, brace, brace, brace.” Some sobbed amid the chanting.
So reading that terrifying account and then reading United Airlines’ statement doesn’t really mesh, right? The good news? Everyone lived. The bad news? Some people are still crazy enough to give money to United Airlines.
