Prime Time Daily

January 18, 2008

The Dallas Gap

There are no nail pictures on this page, only thoughts.

Last time we updated was a week ago when we presented Part 2 of the Lily Birthday Gallery. I had planned to do a Monday update but fell asleep at the wheel Sunday night and had to be at the airport Monday morning at 5AM - I was on my way to Dallas.

I went to Dallas without a computer, so no way to update the page.

Some posts were made on the BBS wondering what happned to the updates. This was nice to see as previously, this page had gone unnoticed for several months.

Three days in Dallas were uneventful .... then came Thursday, the day of departure.

I was on an American Airlines Jet along with about 145 other people as we took off at 11AM from Dallas.

30 minutes into the flight home Thursday, somewhere near Tulsa Oklahoma, the pilot came on the PA system on the plane and announced that we'd be turning around and going back to Dallas because there was a sensor light on his consul that would not go out - the sensor measures ice build up in the engine - in this case, it was ice build up in the left engine of the 737 jet. He said it plainly and distinctly. "The sensor is indicating either that there is ice build up in the left engnine, or it's malfunctioning - period."

Immediately, he made a sharp 180 degree turn to the right - for about three minutes we were leaning hard to the right - and eventually straightened out, lowered our altitude greatly as we now were flying just under the cloud cover. Very low in fact - and we were moving very slowly. As a matter of fact, it took 30 minutes to get to Tulsa, and it took 90 minutes to return back to Dallas. We were moving at a very slow speed - apparently taking our time as the idea was to burn off fuel as it's a big problem to land a 737 when the fuel tanks are full. We circled the airport several times and finally landed 2 hours later. We took off at 11AM and landed at 1PM.

What a relief. There was no panic , but you could sense deep concern among the passengers. I was expecting the worst of course as I always do, but we came away from this unscathed.

We waited in the terminal anticipating another plane, but it never came. We were stranded in Dallas for another overnight stay. We ended up staying that night in a rural country motel paid for by American Airlines - everything was paid for except for our beer :)

We arrived back home safe and sound Friday afternoon.

For me, this was as close to disaster as i ever want to get. Don't want to sound like a drama queen, but this was rather humbling. Sweaty palms, weak knees and life flashing before my eyes, it was quite a ride that Thursday in Dallas.

We're back now updating. We'll restart.

One thing before I go, I want to thank all those that have written to me via email over the past 19 days - your emails are encouraging. And thanks to those that have us restocked with pictures for the next little while.

And finally, thanks to those two American Airline pilots that got us back to Dallas last Thursday in one piece. I'm still alive, and that means I can drool over nail pictures like the ones we'll see of Karoline over the next few days.