The Clairvoyant had a very unpleasant experience yesterday as she traveled back to Singapore from Hongkong. Her flight had to go back to HKIA less than an hour after taking off on time as their plane's landing gear failed to come up. Fortunately for them, the gear was good enough for their landing since the aircraft still had a significant amount of fuel and therefore was quite heavy during landing.
Such things don't seem to get reported in the news though it was a matter of concern not only for the passengers but to their relatives and friends as well. Therefore, information should be disclosed and I'm sure there are ways to inform interested parties without causing possible panic. I state this opinion as the delay was quite significant. Imagine staying in the aircraft for about 3 hours before you are instructed to deplane. It seems that the ground crew in charge of maintenance were not able to make a good enough assessment of the defective landing gear. I was quite surprised that the airline was not able to find a solution as smoothly and as efficiently as it was expected to given its stature in the industry. This was after all the flag carrier of ASEAN's most industrialized member.
On another note, I was also surprised not to see the Clairvoyant's flight in the list of departures of HKIA. It seems that they did some editing with the original flight numbers and there was a conscious effort to hide the fact that an aircraft encountered trouble inflight and had to return to HKIA. I give them the benefit of the doubt though, as I assume there must be some policy with the HKIA or perhaps the HKSAR.
I just hope that such experiences will not be encountered again by the Clairvoyant or me in the future. I am actually looking forward to my trip to Korea, which is coming up in about 2 weeks time. I will be having a stop at Busan airport and hoping that the transfers to and from Jeju would be smooth.
Such things don't seem to get reported in the news though it was a matter of concern not only for the passengers but to their relatives and friends as well. Therefore, information should be disclosed and I'm sure there are ways to inform interested parties without causing possible panic. I state this opinion as the delay was quite significant. Imagine staying in the aircraft for about 3 hours before you are instructed to deplane. It seems that the ground crew in charge of maintenance were not able to make a good enough assessment of the defective landing gear. I was quite surprised that the airline was not able to find a solution as smoothly and as efficiently as it was expected to given its stature in the industry. This was after all the flag carrier of ASEAN's most industrialized member.
On another note, I was also surprised not to see the Clairvoyant's flight in the list of departures of HKIA. It seems that they did some editing with the original flight numbers and there was a conscious effort to hide the fact that an aircraft encountered trouble inflight and had to return to HKIA. I give them the benefit of the doubt though, as I assume there must be some policy with the HKIA or perhaps the HKSAR.
I just hope that such experiences will not be encountered again by the Clairvoyant or me in the future. I am actually looking forward to my trip to Korea, which is coming up in about 2 weeks time. I will be having a stop at Busan airport and hoping that the transfers to and from Jeju would be smooth.
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