A United Express flight bound for Houston diverted to Dallas after two pivotal cockpit screens shut down without warning and could not be restored.
United flight 4390, a CRJ-200 operated by Express Jet, departed from Knoxville, Tennessee on time yesterday evening at 7:34 PM. It would bound for Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH).
About 90 minutes into the flight, the captain announced the plane would be making an unscheduled stop in Dallas due to technical difficulties. Passengers were likely never in danger thanks to the swift and decisive act of the Captain onboard.
Upon landing in Dallas (DFW), the captain explained to passengers what had just occurred:
So you may be able to see we lost two of our screens. Now, if we kept flying, we’d lose them all, eventually, because there’s not enough cooling. There is tremendous heat behind those screens.”
If we had continued, eventually, I’d be flying blind. So, that’s why we are in Dallas right now. It is unlikely this aircraft is going anywhere tonight.
United 4390 lost their screens in the cockpit pic.twitter.com/vliOVotLWW
— Rodney D. Giles (@rodneygiles) April 5, 2019
Indeed, the aircraft did remain in Dallas overnight and passengers were rebooked on other flights to their final destination. The flight is scheduled to continue to Dallas today at noon CT.
CONCLUSION
Pilots are trained to “fly blind” if they must. Even if all the cockpit screens had shut down, I am confident the flight deck crew could have landed that plane safely. Thankfully, that was not necessary.
image: Quintin Soloviev / Wikimedia Commons
United needs to stop reintroducing the CRJ200… They are uncomfortable, old and unreliable.
I was happy to see them go… and now very upset to see them being re-reintroduced at IAH.
Ummm…Lucky they are trained to fly in IMC (Instrument Meterological Conditions), when there is little to no visibility, not when all the critical displays shut down. Having the FMC (Flight Management Computer) and/or PFD (Primary Flight Display) shut down when in IMC is a full blown emergency, because without those displays keep track of EVERYTHING, from Altitude to Airspeed to Position. Even partial loss of instruments can be fatal, as Air France 447 showed us.
You mean “Matthew”, not “Lucky”. This is not One Mile at A Time lol.
What was Rodney smoking there in that tweet? “…something is on fire in the plane”
Geez… talk about misinformation.
That original tweet by Rodney is one of a trillion other reasons why social media overall has been a bad deal for our society.
Even articles spread misinformation. This article mistakenly reports the airline as “SkyWest” instead of “ExpressJet”. Most other media reports go this correct, as did the United website graphic in this article.
No mention of the brand name of the plane in any article.
Why?
A “CRJ-200” is a Bombardier product.