Scary moments onboard a United Airlines flight bound from New York LaGuardia to Houston this morning after a compressor stall forced a diversion to Newark.
Flyertalk member anandrag was onboard the flight and shared his experience:
Anyone else on that flight? 2 loud BANGS when we took off. Right engine partial failure sounds like. We diverted to EWR. Don’t scare easily but that was scary.
This sounds like a compressor stall issue. Something caused a disruption of airflow: perhaps it was birds or hot exhaust from the previous jet. The captain reported engine failure and was cleared to land in Newark.
Flight 657, a Boeing 737-700, had 89 passengers and crew members onboard. After examining the aircraft in Newark, the flight continued to Houston about 2.5 hours later.
CONCLUSION
I’ve encountered several aborted landings over the years, but imagine two loud bangs after takeoff, like something blowing up. I do not scare easily, but I think I would be scared as well. That is not a comforting sound when you are in an airplane.
I’d rather take United from Queens to Newark any day over Uber, but not under this circumstance.
Have you ever been on a flight where the compressors stalled after takeoff?
500 PQM bonus for silver and above?
lol. Doubtful.
I was on a LAX-HNL UA 747 and just after takeoff we heard a big bang and then the plane began to turn around. The pilot said we had lost an engine. Since we had three others it wasn’t too scary. Then the pilot came on again and said, just to clarify, that when he said we had lost an engine he did not mean that it fell off but rather that we had lost power. I guess some pax had freaked out about his first announcement.