It had been a lovely, tranquil (Valentine) weekend in Stockholm, with brilliant sunshine and, wonder of wonders, mild weather - 3 or 4 degrees above zero.
It was Sunday night and Bart and I were relaxing on the plane back to Brussels, reading the paper and reflecting over what a relaxing weekend it had been.
Below us we could see the lights of Brussels - we were well into our final approach, and would soon be home.
And then we started to smell burning. The sort of smell you get when a piece of paper catches fire, quite sweet but a bit acrid as well. And suddenly it felt very warm under our feet. We looked round and other passengers were also clearly alarmed.
The flight attendants started to walk up and down the plane, looking out of the windows at the four engines of our BAe 146 jet. None seemed to be on fire.
For a truly appaling moment, the denial which we all enter into when we board an aeroplane, hiding behind the statistics that tell us "it will never happen to us", that denial slipped, and it looked like something quite serious was about to happen. If something in the hold really had caught fire, that really would be a terrible way to go.
The pilot extended the wing flaps, and we landed in what seemed to be rather a hurry. The smell seemed to go away, and the crew welcomed us to Brussels.
I have to say that I've never been quite so relieved to be back on the terra cotta as John Prescott would, apparently have it.
Ever the Nancy Drew type, I put the words BAe 146, burning smell and landing into Google, and discovered that the plane seems to be quite famous (if that's the right word) for air quality issues, and notably for "cabin fume incidents". I even unearthed an Australian parliamentary enquiry dossier into the issue, quoting various sources who seemed to claim that it was far from rare, and even that on occasion the crew have become incapacitated by burnt oil fumes coming from broken seals in the air circulation, or words to that effect.
I'm not sure whether to be relieved that we weren't actually on fire, or angry that we had such an extremely alarming experience and don't seem to be the only ones.
I'll certainly think twice before boarding what used to be my favourite type of aircraft in the future.
Posted by Eurodan at February 16, 2004 1:19 PMEek! Nightmare. Glad to hear it wasn't the full-scale disaster it must have felt like.
Of course, next time you'll be totally blasé about the whole thing: "Burning smell? Pah! Happens all the time on these crates. After awhile you get to quite like it..."
Posted by: matt at February 16, 2004 2:18 PMI don't envy you that experience at all. It trumps my "aborted take-off attempt followed by a second run with no explanation at all from the crew" and "control panel red light requiring an armful of manuals and the entire flight to rectify" experiences hands down.
But I wouldn't worry too much in future. Although they don't have the best safety record, BAe 146s have an accident rate better than Boeing 747s, MD11s and Airbus A310s and one similar to A300s. All aircraft have idiosyncratic methods of failure, for example 737 uncommanded full rudder movements, ATR42/72 icing problems, along with the more old fashioned DC10 cargo doors and comet fatigue cracks around the windows.
Few types of commercial aircraft have odds of fatal events much different from those of winning the lottery, with the exception of Concorde, which has its figure skewed by its comparitavely small number of flights (it had nearly 18 times as many full loss equivalent accidents per million flights as the BAe 146.)
As you probably remember, I carry a smoke hood whenever I fly, and in the event of crew incapacitation due to smoke in the cockpit, I'd be quite willing to take over. Now if only I could get hold of a cheap parachute...
Posted by: Shyboy at February 16, 2004 8:11 PMOh yes. Did I ever tell you the story of my childhood DC10 experience? Not that there's actually much to tell. Something for a future blog post, perhaps.
Posted by: matt at February 16, 2004 11:11 PMOh my GOD... am I the only one worried by Shyboy's comment there?!
You certainly coped with that better than I would have!! I have to go for hypnosis before I fly because it scares me so much!!
Posted by: Rhod. at February 17, 2004 12:17 AMMatt - do tell!
And Rhod (welcome!) I actually would be quite happy for Shyboy to take over the controls of the plane, although I might need to remind him that we weren't dealing with a simulator! ;-)
Posted by: Eurodan at February 17, 2004 1:07 PMI remain unconvinced that Nancy Drew ever used Google.
Posted by: Alison at February 17, 2004 1:33 PMAh, yes, well you may indeed have a point there, Alison. But she probably *would* have done were she still sleuthing today...
Posted by: Eurodan at February 17, 2004 4:07 PM:-) Thanks for the vote of confidence in my (as yet untested) piloting skills, Dan.
And Rhod, just remember that the people steering at the pointy end of a plane are probably even more concerned than you that nothing goes wrong, 'cos they get to act as a crumple zone for the rest of us if it does ;-)
(I think what is most scarey about my earlier comment is how ridiculously unlikely one is to win the lottery :-)
Posted by: Shyboy at February 17, 2004 6:36 PM