Ice Ice Baby

One night on a Vegas junket we were considerably delayed due to an ice storm in Dallas. You can only imagine. Finally after hours on hold, we get a tiny window to take off. Oh the joy of it all!!!

I was seated on the aft jumpseat on a MD-90 which is neatly sandwiched between the two aft engines. It really is a charming setup and I’m sure contributed to my hearing skills to this day, but I digress.

As we began our takeoff roll, suddenly a high-pitched screeching noise and whining began in the number 2 engine on my right. It grew in intensity and there was no doubt in my mind when I called the flight deck and said “abort!”

The captain barked “no!”

Of course I knew my place in the chain of command, and it was not such that I could order the captain to abort, but time was of the essence and there was no time to talk it out. I also anticipated that he could hear the noise as I left the interphone open.

He must have heard the otherworldly noise, since he did abort and pull over.

He called me up to the cockpit. He was not pleased.

After explaining that I had not heard a noise like that in over 20 years, I fly by sound and that I think a mechanic might want to lay eyes on it, his (remaining) hair stood on end and he said we were going to Vegas; it was his ship.

I announced to the flight recorder (recycles every 30 minutes) that I voted to examine the engine and was going against my will and I loved my husband very much.

We went back to the terminal.

He told me to get off. As I sat in the terminal contemplating my next career move, I saw a mechanic come out to look at the engine. A few minutes later the captain came in and sat next to me. It turns out we had sucked a large chunk of ice into that engine from the ice storm and it had stripped the metal blades clean. If we had tried to take off we would have pitched and most likely lost control.

This became another teaching piece for crews in years to come, on CRM and communication with the entire team. Rigid authority can be a big issue culturally and has contributed to air disasters of foreign airlines, and it can cause clashes when military SOPs try to blend with civilians. That was one night I was glad I took a lesson from my personal past and stuck to my convictions and spoke up.