Extreme Flying, uh Taxiing?

[ricki]

I was heading out to the mountains to stay with some friends for a long weekend. The normal plan is to fly out after work and returning on a red eye flight on Sunday. This time I pulled a seat over one of the wings. There were quite a few planes in line to take off so we were taking our sweet time getting to the runaway. Every once in a while I would hear and feel a vibration, a disturbing one. It just didn't seem normal at all. This kept up for a while, I mentioned it to the people decide me who didn't seem to notice it.

Finally a stewardess came by and I told her that there is a vibration and noise coming from the port landing gear that I felt wasn't normal. I mentioned it might be something to do with the brakes. She asked if I was a pilot to which I asked if hang gliders counted? If we have gear problems in hang gliding it is often a loose shoe lace. I told her to sit in my seat and she would likely be able to hear and feel the vibration. She didn't want to do that and took off.

The stewardess later returned saying the pilot looked into it and saw nothing out of the ordinary and not to worry about it. I told her the noise had become more persistent and that she really should sit in my seat as it was less apparent in the isle. I was about to make more of a stink about it as it simply didn't seem right at all. She took off again and shortly there was the announcement over the PA.

"A passenger over the left wing has complained about a vibration in the aircraft. We are now seeing a temperature warning light for the left landing gear brake. We will need to taxi back to the terminal to evaluate." Thanks, blame it on me! So, we turned back and had to frequently stop to allow the brakes to cool before creeping on again. The noise was very loud and grating vibration strong as we headed back to the terminal. I started to worry about making it out for the weekend and jumped on the cell phone to call reservations to try to figure out another connection without much success.

The problem was said to take overnight to fix, so we left that plane. They redirected another outbound flight for us so we were still able to make it out but not to the connecting flight for me.

I am not sure what would have happened had the aircraft actually taken off with the damaged brakes. I understand that they had been recently worked on but apparently something was still wrong with them. Once you are in the air, there you are. It is the landing part that I wonder about. You go from not much friction and temperature to really hot in seconds at landing speed. Could there be a fire or could the brake even seize up? Landing on snow with one seized gear to spin the plane out? We'll never know in this case, a VERY good thing. I made it out that night with a layover to the morning and the snow in the mountains was good.

Moral: If you think something isn't right, don't keep it to yourself. Maybe the rubber chicken or landing gear "really" isn't right.