Thursday 20 June 2024

Midnight ordeal for MH199

I heard about Malaysia Airlines flight MH199 that had to turn back to Hyderabad airport in India this morning after some issues popped up. It is understood that the aircraft experienced an engine malfunction, which caused sparks to emanate from the affected engine. My friends were curious if it was a Boeing, so I checked on the FlightRadar24 website and confirmed it was indeed a B737-800 from Malaysia Airlines. Boeing again, huh? They've really been hitting the news for all the wrong reasons lately, and this just adds to their troubles.

While I was on the website, I saw from the graphic simulation that the flight took off from Hyderabad at about 12:45am local time. It flew southeast for about half an hour before suddenly making a 360-degree U-turn back to the airport. Now, you'd think if there was an emergency, they'd be given the go-ahead to land right away, right? But no, instead, the air controllers had the plane go into a holding pattern, looping around 12 times before it was allowed to land at 3:21am. That's a whole hour and a half of circling in the sky in the middle of the night! What were they thinking? I can only imagine how anxious and scared the passengers must have been.




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