It was a pretty normal takeoff routine, up until we hit the runway. The leisurely roll around the various intra-airport streets, and then a quick turn and the whine of the engines spooling up. Then, as the plane started forward, a boom and shudder. Then another. The question "why would they put speed bumps on the runway?" casually wandered through my head. Then the plane stopped accelerating and we coasted to a stop. Hrm. Then I heard a little speech I had never heard before on a commercial flight: "Ladies and gentlemen, Hawaiian airlines has been in business for 71 years and we currently hold the world safety record. We'd like to keep it that way, so we're taxiing back to the gate." A few minutes later, the pilot came on and explained that during the initial spool up, engine 2 decided to fail. I guess engine 2 is the one mounted on the tail of the DC-10. I was sitting at the window seat directly over the right wing, so I would have seen any sort of explosive activity that would have caused loud booms and shudders.

I'm glad we're back at the gate, waiting in the boarding area. Engines failing on the ground and engines failing in the air are orders of magnitude apart, as far as survival rates go.

I keep thinking of a year ago and Sam. That would have been a little too ironic.

So anyway, airport again. Whee. I'm sitting here with my flamboyantly purple laptop typing away on my little text file.

It will take 30 minutes to figure out if the plane is fixable or not, they have just announced. If it is repairable, they say we will be rescheduled for a flight later today. If not, our flight is canceled and we will get booked into hotels.

I can barely restrain myself from calling everyone I know and bragging that I narrowly averted taking part in airline accident statistic generation and making an appearance as some debris in a picture in the Star-Bulletin.

Ooh hooray, we get $8 worth of food while we wait. That stirred up the noise level in the boarding area a bit.

That sucks, cause I just bought about $8 worth of food right before boarding. Had I know we had a flaky engine, I would have waited until after the... um. Hmm. I guess I probably would have just not gotten on the plane, huh. In fact, even if they decide that the engine is fixable, I don't know if I want to get back on the plane. I mean, it was fucked up enough that the engine failed (in whatever manner of failure would produce loud booms) immediately when power was applied to it, but they apparently did not detect this during the pre-flight inspection, or whatever other checklists they go through before a plane takes off. What makes me think that this time they will catch ALL of the bugs? One of the other engines could be fucked up, and might not show it until we're thirty thousand feet in the air. At that point, we would probably have to make what's colloquially referred to as "A Water Landing". Literally, "smashing into the ocean at high speed with the landing gear up". Crap, I just remembered that Sea-Tac airport has wireless LAN access points scattered around that I might take advantage of, except that I didn't bring my wavelan card, figuring I wouldn't need it. Doh. Perhaps this entry will never get posted. Oh I know, I could use one of those telephones with the DataPort(tm).

Hmm. Having $8 of food at my disposal which I don't want to eat is generating bad ideas. $8 buys a lot of fries. I could order 4 huge frieses and build stuff out of them. Or I could get a bunch of burgers and combine them into one omni-burger. Actually, airport food is pretty expensive. I could probably just barely afford a burger and drink.

I am enjoying a non-optional stay at the doubletree hotel near Sea-Tac airport. I don't have my luggage, all I know is, they will call me with further info when they know more about how we're all going to Hawaii without an airplane.

I'm noticing the other passengers playing up the drama of the situation a bunch, referring to the temporary area the hotel set up to register all of us as a "Refugee Area" and to the actual incident as "A Near Tragedy". Certainly, this would make it a more fun story to tell if it seemed as if I had been Seconds From Death(tm), but I'm sure this is a fairly banal event, as far as the airline is concerned. On the other hand, through all the flying I've done for work and for keeping in touch, I've never once been in a plane that has aborted its takeoff. I know from friends who are interested in flying and crashing that their are 2 or 3 important times during the takeoff. I'm not sure whether they are times or speeds, but anyway, there's V1 and V2 and whatever they call the point where the plane points up. V-rotate or something like that. Maybe that's V2. Anyway, one of them is the speed at which you can no longer abort a takeoff, and boy am I glad we didn't get there.

so, time to see if I set up this crazy modem right.