Gas Leak on an Airplane

As I am writing this, I am sitting at gate A38 of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, waiting for news of when our next plane might take off. It is 1:30 AM in Dallas, and I am just about ready to keel over and die.

How did we get here?

I boarded a plane from PIT to DFW which took off about 7:15 PM, Pittsburgh time. (It’s an hour ahead of Dallas.) Everything is all hunky-dory, and we land at about 10 PM Dallas time. We bust our asses off and get on a plane from DFW to SFO which took off about 11 PM. So far so good.

But then a gas leak(!!) of all things occurs in the plane, and so we have to turn around. Initially I was a bit annoyed that there was a problem with our flight, but it quickly turns into a horrified sort of gratitude that the plane didn’t blow up in the sky instead. Anyway, we hadn’t been flying long, so we were able to land safely.

The plan originally was to get everyone out of the plane, including the pilots, and then all hop onto a different plane. However, the pilots reported feeling sick(?)¹ because of the gas fumes and thus were unable to fly. So we are now waiting for another set of pilots, and who knows how long that’ll take because (expectedly) pilots are sleeping at 1:30 AM.

The next scheduled flight is at 5 AM, and if there is no replacement flight, I fear the passengers may need to fight for the seats on the 5 AM flight. (The plane with the gas leak was a full flight.)

So yeah, this has been a great start to my fall break. But genuinely, I am so glad to be alive right now.

Update: They found a flight at 7 AM and gave us meal/Uber/hotel vouchers. Unfortunately, the only hotels around were about 20 minutes away, but at least the hotel room was very nice. I slept for about 3 hours until I woke up at 5 to go to the airports and got McDonald’s.

The 7 AM flight got to San Francisco without a hitch. I am still tired as hell, but all is alright, I suppose.