Unruly pax - USA - Curt lewis

Passenger tries to open jet door; Seattle-bound flight makes emergency landing Alaska Airlines' Boeing 737-900ER (extended range) passenger jet. Photo courtesy: ALASKA AIRLINES MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. -- A Seattle-bound Alaska Airlines jet made an emergency landing at the Minneapolis St Paul Airport on Monday morning after a passenger tried to open a door in mid-flight. The passenger became unruly, then tried to open a door at the rear of the 737, said Alaska spokeswoman Halley Knigge. She said it is not possible to open the door in flight because of air pressure differences between inside and outside the plane. The crew tried to calm him, then decided to divert to Minneapolis. He was arrested after the 737 landed at Minneapolis about 9:45 a.m. Central time. Flight 7 originated at 7:15 Eastern time from JFK Airport in New York. The flight took off for Seattle at 11:08 a.m. Central time with 180 passengers on the plane. It landed in Seattle just before 1 p.m. Pacific time. http://komonews.com/news/local/passenger-tries-to-open-jet-door-seattle-bound-flight-makes-emergency-landing Back to Top

Crews Respond In Oven, Mobile-Phone Smoke Incidents WASHINGTON-Separate inflight smoke incidents in April and May turned out to be relatively innocuous, but demonstrated superior crew responses, according to new investigative reports by the Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB). In the first incident, a United AirlinesBoeing 787-900 (registered as N36962) that had just departed Sydney for San Francisco on April 17 returned to Sydney after flight crew reported a "short burst of smoke" from two aft-cabin ovens that had been turned on during departure. The smoke, which the crew said had a "strong chemical odor and an electrical smell as well as a blue haze," set off a fire alarm in a nearby lavatory. Although the crew shut down power to the aft galley and the smoke dissipated, the captain ultimately decided to return to Sydney after discussing the issue with United's ground-based technical operations maintenance controller over a satellite phone. "It could not be confidently ascertained that the ovens were the sole source of the problem," the ATSB said, adding that "all emergency procedures were carried out efficiently and effectively" and that the captain had involved all relevant crew members and the maintenance controller in making the decision to divert. A follow-up investigation revealed that the smoke came from a blown fuse in the oven, an issue caused by an above-normal motor temperature that had been a known fault addressed by a new oven-software release. "Boeing reported that the oven manufacturer is working with United Airlines to update the software in all relevant ovens in their fleet," the ATSB said. It is not clear if oven software was the issue in another United 787 oven-smoke diversion in June. The ATSB said the aircraft (N35953) experienced an electrical odor in the mid-B galley and returned to Melbourne after dumping fuel. Maintainers determined that an oven fuse had blown and replaced the oven. ATSB The second smoke event, on a QantasAirbusA380 (VH-OQD) flying from Sydney to Dallas/Fort Worth, was caused by a mobile phone that had been crushed inside a business-class seat. The ATSB said it has received 17 notifications of similar incidents of lithium battery "thermal events" in aircraft over the past six years. The A380 was approximately 2 hr. from landing when a passenger alerted cabin crew about the smoke; the crew "then initiated the basic fire drill procedure," the ATSB said. While two cabin crewmembers headed to the upper deck with fire extinguishers, the customer service manager (CSM) made an "all stations" emergency call on the aircraft interphone to alert the flight crew. The crew removed the seat cushions from seat 19F while the CSM turned off the power to the center column of seats. "When the seat was further dismantled, the crew found a crushed personal electronic device [later found to have a lithium-ion battery] wedged tightly in the seat mechanism," the ATSB said. The crew was able to free the device from the seat, and although it was no longer smoking, placed it in a jug of water, which was then put inside a metal box and monitored for the remainder of the flight. "This incident provides an excellent example of an effective response to an emergency situation," the ATSB said. "The crew was quickly able to implement the basic fire-drill procedure, which defined the roles and responsibilities of the responding crew. This enabled a rapid and coordinated response to the smoke event, using all available resources."