HONOLULU (eTN) – Some tourists, after a sunny, relaxing vacation in Hawaii, were met with unwelcomed excitement when their United flight 1221 took off from Honolulu, Hawaii, headed to Los Angeles, California.
The crew and passengers experienced a scare in the sky today when the flight had to turn around and make an emergency landing where it was met by Honolulu fire trucks.
“The alarm went off, and there was a strange smell which is hard to explain, and the cabin had lost pressure,” said eTN Publisher Juergen Steinmetz, who was a passenger on the flight.
The video below shows the actual aircraft landing and taxiing back to Gate 10, where it departed from Honolulu:
At 1:34 pm (Hawaii Standard Time), the Honolulu Fire Department was onboard investigating the aircraft.
“The plane was too heavy when it landed,” Steinmetz texted. “A ‘heavy landing’ is how United is describing it.
“The plane now needs to be checked to make sure there’s no ‘structural damage,’ meaning we do not know when we will take off again.”
All passengers were subsequently deplaned and have since been told they are now scheduled to board at 3 pm Hawaii Standard Time.
In the meantime, another United flight from Honolulu to Guam had to be canceled due to a technical issue. Those passengers are being put up in a hotel.
At 3:52 pm, the aircraft pulled back from Gate 10 without any passengers and took a short test flight. About a half hour later, it was announced that passengers would soon be able to board the aircraft, but that was quickly followed up with a new announcement that the pilot had decided not to fly the plane to Los Angeles.
It was a good news, bad news scenario, as the airline representative said that was the bad news, but the good news was that they had chartered a different aircraft to make the flight.
As passengers headed to Gate 15 to board, the gate agent, a lovely local woman, asked, “Is everyone happy now?” to which she received a fairly unanimous, “No…” Empathisizing with the passengers, she said they were free to line up and she would personally give each and everyone of them a hug. As the locals say, “Only in Hawaii” – it’s called the Aloha spirit.
