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TRIBUNE SPECIAL REPORT
Airline industry in a jam
Flight 1073 shows how easy it is for a situation to go from bad to worse, especially when carriers operate with little, no slack
By Julie Johnsson
Tribune staff reporter
Published June 10, 2007
David Scheibelhut and his wife, Joann Schulte, and teenage daughter Jade were numb with grief as they boarded United Airlines Flight 1073 bound for Chicago. Schulte's mother had died during their spring vacation in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and they had just one day to get home to help plan her funeral.
Steve Gerard, on his first trip overseas since the Sept. 11 attacks, was also anxious to return to his home in northwest suburban Cary. He had run out of his blood-pressure medicine.
Jeff and Laura Jacobs, like many parents on the plane, were stressed just thinking of how to entertain two small kids during what was supposed to be a five-hour flight.
A consultant who travels extensively, Jeff Jacobs was among the first to sense trouble as soon as the plane's TV screens flipped down. Instead of the usual pre-flight safety video, an episode of "The Office" flickered overhead as the jet baked on the runway.
Jacobs braced for a delay but never imagined that over the next two days he and about 140 passengers would be stranded in a foreign airport as a cascade of mishaps—first a lack of common parts, then no mechanics and finally having to wait for a rescue plane from Chicago—turned Flight 1073 into an "irregular operation," airline jargon for a flight from hell.
Link to the rest..
Airline industry in a jam
Flight 1073 shows how easy it is for a situation to go from bad to worse, especially when carriers operate with little, no slack
By Julie Johnsson
Tribune staff reporter
Published June 10, 2007
David Scheibelhut and his wife, Joann Schulte, and teenage daughter Jade were numb with grief as they boarded United Airlines Flight 1073 bound for Chicago. Schulte's mother had died during their spring vacation in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and they had just one day to get home to help plan her funeral.
Steve Gerard, on his first trip overseas since the Sept. 11 attacks, was also anxious to return to his home in northwest suburban Cary. He had run out of his blood-pressure medicine.
Jeff and Laura Jacobs, like many parents on the plane, were stressed just thinking of how to entertain two small kids during what was supposed to be a five-hour flight.
A consultant who travels extensively, Jeff Jacobs was among the first to sense trouble as soon as the plane's TV screens flipped down. Instead of the usual pre-flight safety video, an episode of "The Office" flickered overhead as the jet baked on the runway.
Jacobs braced for a delay but never imagined that over the next two days he and about 140 passengers would be stranded in a foreign airport as a cascade of mishaps—first a lack of common parts, then no mechanics and finally having to wait for a rescue plane from Chicago—turned Flight 1073 into an "irregular operation," airline jargon for a flight from hell.
Link to the rest..
