USAirways flight 26

flyhigh

flyhigh

Well-Known Member
I was listening to PHL atc and USAirways flight 26 was waiting in line to takeoff when they told the tower that they had a medical emergency back in the cabin. So they got out of line and taxied back to the terminal. Last I checked, it took off at 10:26 PM instead of 8:25 PM. Now here is my question... what is the least that can happen in order for the pilot to turn back to the terminal? And my second question is why do you think they were delayed 2 hours?
 
You can return to the gate for a variety of reasons from maintenance to passenger problems. It really all depends. But whenver you return to the gate for any reason, it's goign to involve usually getting a new gate which may or may not be readily available, having an available agent (if there's even one available) to man the gate and manipulate the jetway IF there's an available ground crew that has the abilitiy to stop doing what they're doing to help marshall the aircraft in. And that's before the problem/discrepancy even gets addressed.

But the least that can happen? Well, it really depends on a wide variety of factors.
 
It's really like asking what's the least that can happen to necessitate calling the police!
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I am just going to guess about the takeoff time. 8:25PM was their pushback time. So if they pushed on time and were in line for the runway it could have easily been at least 8:45. Then they turn back and get to a gate at 8:50. Do whatever they need to do with the medical problem and maybe take on more fuel, they could be starting the pushback again at 9:20. Although it probably was not too busy that late, I saw my cousin off to LHR in the terminal back when you could do that and at 9PM I counted more than 30 planes so maybe they did have a long wait. After 10PM would be about right if there was a big line...and it was windy yesterday.
 
One time when I was flying from NRT-MSP we were pushed back and were ready to start our taxi when they foudn out that one of the doors was broken. We taxied to a remote area of the airport to get a mechanic to come work on it. After that didn't work we went back to a new gate. Took forever. So yeah, dont know what valuable info this is adding, but yeah.
 
When I flew on Northwest from NRT(Tokyo, Japan) to DTW few years back, we were holding short of runway for about 30 minutes. The reason --> airport was closed due typhoon/hurricane passed by. When we finally cleared for takeoff, flight crew found out #1 engine would not start. We taxied back and wait for new parts. It took another 30 minutes.


adreamer
 
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