Scary airplane experience, just another reason to be restrained

lovemyfamily

New member
Some of you may remember, I am a former flight attendant, and my DH is an airline Captain. I am a HUGE advocate for kids to be in carseats on planes, and often find myself in heated discussions with friends of friends on Facebook, or other forums, with regards to this topic. But after going through training and seeing crash videos of what happens to lap babies, nothing makes sense but to be harnessed on the plane.
Anyway, our family of 6, add on Grandma, Aunt Sally and Cousin (23yo) Kimberly traveled to Disneyland for DD's 3rd birthday in February. Had a TERRIFIC time, by the way. Because of my DH's job, we fly for free. Nice at times, but often times the flights are full and since we travel standby, full means we don't get on. This was the case as our vacation ended and we were attempting to return back to home to Spokane, WA. Thankfully Grandma, Aunt Sally and Cousin Kimberly were from Phoenis, and they had driven to California AND had room in their Tahoe for my 2 oldest kids. We had brought along their booster seats, Parkway and Recaro Vivo Lite, for use from the airport to our hotel, so we loaded them up and off they headed to Phoenix. Our flight home had us stopping in Phoenix, so the boys were supposed to be dropped off to us at the airport, and then we would catch our flight to Spokane. The flight out of Orange County was pretty full, so my husband signed himself up for the jumpseat, meaning he would ride in the flight deck. Thankfully my 2 little ones, ages just turned 3, and 8 months, and I, were able to get the last 3 empty seats on the plane. DH and I installed their carseats, DD in a Marathon FF as she had just reached 33 lbs. and DS in his Chicco Keyfit 30, DD was at the window, I was in the aisle, we were in the last row of the plane. Since my DH is a pilot, he and I were chatting with the flight attendants before we took off, they offered to help me with bathroom breaks etc. Nice ladies.
Anyway, all was normal as we pushed off the gate, and headed to the end of the runway to start take off roll. DS doesn't like to sit in his carseat during the flight, but I insisted, feeding him Cheerio after Cheerio while DD sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, he cried along with her. I had planned to take him out to nurse him, before he would drift off to sleep, once we reached cruise altitude. Being this was a Friday, the flight was full with many business travelers heading home from their work week, including the row next to us and the one in front of us. I do recall seeing 1 other family with kids, although I am not sure if the child was a lap child, or in a seat, but noted no carseat, child looked around 2.
The Captain came on the PA and said "ladies and gentlemen we are next for departure, flight attendants please be seated." There was a flight attendant commuting to work who was sitting in the rear jumpseat, near the left side door, the 3rd flight attendant was in her jumpseat in the aisle behind my seat. We were in an Airbus A319, holding 124 passengers, plus 3 flight attendants, the extra, 2 pilots and the extra (my DH).
If you have ever flown in and out of Orange County you know how crazy take off is out of there. There is a noise abatment ruling, sorry for anyone that lives there but idiots built their big homes next to the airport, then complained about the noise! DUH! So the planes take off quicker than at most airports, because they have to get up and above the homes faster, they cut back the power on the engines to hush the noise once in the air, and there is actually a curfew, planes cannot leave before a certain time, nor take off after a certain time. My DH thinks this is a bunch of crap and he choses to NOT fly in and out of that airport for this reason. SO, we start our take off abruptly and we are going FAST! All of a sudden we stop, I mean STOP! No gradual easing on the brakes, but a stop, then another stop and we are now sideways on the runway! I grabbed on to the seat in front of me, grown men were yelling words a 3yo should not hear, and then nothing! But smoke, coming from the left side of the aircraft. Now my training, although I haven't flown since 1997 as a flight attendant, comes back to me. I remember cleary that you give the pilots 3 minutes to give you the signal to evacuate or not, and if you hear nothing in that 3 minutes, you evacuate. BUT, I also remember the part where it says you evacuate if there is imminent danger. Hmm, smoke, is that imminent danger? Could it be from the tires, brakes, I mean really, we STOPPED so fast! I turn my head over my left shoulder to the flight attendant who is looking down at her watch. I bet only a minute passes, but it seemed like an hour, when I hear "remain seated" over the PA, it was the Captain. My DD looks at me and says "why'd we stop Mommy?" Hmm "honey I am not sure. But I am sure we are going to be fine, let's just see what happens." She then asks if Daddy knows we stopped. I had to LOL. Yes, I am sure he does, and why! I figured busy airport, maybe a smaller plane on the runway. So a few minutes goes by and we finally begin to move. The Captain comes on to tell us that he had an indication of engine trouble during the take off and he aborted it. That there seems to be some smoke coming from the left engine and we are moving off the runway, although not toward the terminal, while the firetrucks meet us as a precaution. The flight attendant gets on the interphone, and then a couple minutes later says to me, if it's fire, we are evacuating, we will help with your kids!!! :eek: Yeah, I did that in training, the slide was fun, but NOT with my kids. Thankfully we got the all clear from the FD to head back to the terminal. They ask everyone to deplane until they can figure out what is going on. FINALLY after all 121 people are off, here comes my DH. I say to him "what the heck!?" He laughs and says that he wasn't sure what happened. He heard the warning and saw the light, kept his mouth shut. He said the plane automatically shut down that engine due to the warning, which is what the 2nd stop and sideways was from, reverse thrust. He knows the Captain really well and said he's a good guy, he did things right. Ok good.
Anyway, needless to say, we didn't make to Phoenix that night. The flight after that was filled with paying passengers from our flight. We took an early flight to Phoenix the next morning and met our kids, to come home to Spokane. As far as the plane, they never did find anything wrong. Smoke was simply the brakes and tires.
My point to all this is simple, just a long story to get there. HAD I been holding DS during that take off, there is a VERY strong possibility I would not have been able to hold on to him. Maybe my initial reaction wouldn't have been to grab the seat in front of me, but when I looked over at them, DD seemed to be pressed back in to her seat by her straps. EVEN in a case like this, my kids were SO much better off in their seats.
 
ADS

An Aurora

Senior Community Member
Yikes, how scary! I am glad you guys are ok, thankfully you know what you know and they are safe! We will never fly without the kids in seats either.
 

LISmama810

Admin - CPS Technician
Wow! I didn't hear about that, but I don't get the OC paper anymore.

I fly out of John Wayne all the time (well, I mean, not that I fly often, but whenever I do, it's from there.) Even after 20 years, I still find the takeoffs disconcerting. I've never had a problem before, but I always worry about it.

So glad you were all restrained and ok!
 

andre149

New member
How scary! I'm so glad you guys are all ok. Can I share your story with some parents I know who frequently fly with lap babies? I would love to give them a first hand account.
 

heasmommy

Senior Community Member
Thank you for sharing your story. I have told my DH if we cannot afford to buy seats for all of the kids then we just cannot afford to fly (of course now everyone is old enough to require a seat) and we always bring our seats on the plane with us.
 

Brianna

New member
Glad everyone was ok! Can I share this story on Yahoo Answers? A lot of parents on there choose to put their seats under the plane and I have a hard time convincing them to actually use the seats during flight
 

Ninetales

New member
Thanks for sharing. We were invited to a wedding this summer and Elsa and I have to decline because we can't afford a flight for all three of us and I won't ever fly if we can't afford a seat for her. If there's a huge emergency then I will charge it and deal later.

Even if I was ok with the risk to her and everyone around her I probably still would get her a drag for my own sanity. The child only stops moving if she's asleep. In her seat she'd be liable to sit without incident like in the car. If I tried to hold her in my lap she'd wiggle and yell to get down, and then terrorize the rest of the plane.
 

J-max

CPST Instructor
Thanks for sharing. My husband is a GA pilot and we have had a few aborted take-offs and go-arounds, and I am always so thankful that our kids are safely buckled up.

We ALWAYS buy the extra seat for our kids when flying commercial, even thought it is extra $ and can be a pain to lug the carseats around. But we had an interested experience a couple of weeks ago, we were purchasing tickets to fly for Christmas and the agent was totally baffled that we wanted a ticket for a child that was not born yet, and she had a very hard time figuring out how to buy one for a person with no name and/or birth date, LOL!
 

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