The following day after the Monday accident, I boarded the Thai Airways flight from Manila to Bangkok.  We were supposed to leave 1255.  The Thai pilot said something in garbled English about only one runway and other flights diverted to other airports, and we might takeoff in an hour.

 

Thus, I got on this forum to see what happened, possibly at the new Bangkok airport.

 

Although this posted news article talked about a Monday accident, apparently Tuesday there was still a problem at Suvarnbhumi [sp?].

 

We took off about an hour and 20 minutes later.  We arrived 1705 instead of about 1600.

 

The Immigration line was very short and took me only 10 minutes to wait my turn.

 

Luckily I made it to my 6 pm Bell bus (airport to Pattaya hotel) about 5 minutes before boarding.

 

So, the one runway problem lasted at least a day.  Why?

 

Hand brake turns require skill to carry out correctly  ????

And if the handbrake (nosewheel steering) is used at high speed the pilot loses control !

Boeings don’t do touchdowns with brakes they stop by thrust reversers and deploying the flaps!

55 minutes ago, ChiangMaiLightning2143 said:

And if the handbrake (nosewheel steering) is used at high speed the pilot loses control !

Boeings don’t do touchdowns with brakes they stop by thrust reversers and deploying the flaps!

Oh dear, glad your not sitting at the pointy end of any aircraft I'm flying in. - What nonsense! BTW the quote you relate to is obviously 'tong in cheek'

So many quick to let fire all cannons at Thai Airways because they had a 747 on this particular flight with only 97 pax.
As some others pointed out, equipment changes happen regularly.

 

Not one person has pointed out yet that although the passenger load was very light on that flight - this does not necessarily mean the same underneath
 

Its entirely possible a full freight load was on board, and hence potentially earning more $$$ on that flight than the pax revenue would be.

just food for thought

On 10/9/2018 at 5:06 PM, natway09 said:

For all you Thai bashers Emrites flew an A 380 from Dubai to Perth with 87 passengers on it last month (but OK as they get their fuel for free in Dubai ) making it not an even playing field

No, they don't get their fuel for free at all, that is utter nonsense.

On 10/10/2018 at 6:42 PM, Grin Grasser said:

The following day after the Monday accident, I boarded the Thai Airways flight from Manila to Bangkok.  We were supposed to leave 1255.  The Thai pilot said something in garbled English about only one runway and other flights diverted to other airports, and we might takeoff in an hour.

 

Thus, I got on this forum to see what happened, possibly at the new Bangkok airport.

 

Although this posted news article talked about a Monday accident, apparently Tuesday there was still a problem at Suvarnbhumi [sp?].

 

We took off about an hour and 20 minutes later.  We arrived 1705 instead of about 1600.

 

The Immigration line was very short and took me only 10 minutes to wait my turn.

 

Luckily I made it to my 6 pm Bell bus (airport to Pattaya hotel) about 5 minutes before boarding.

 

So, the one runway problem lasted at least a day.  Why?

 

So it skidded off the runway at 11pm.  First priority is to get everyone off safely.  The plane is bogged down in heavy mud and 747's are pretty heavy.  When they finally got the equipment in place the operation to remove it took around four hours which is pretty good.  The runway was reopened, the backlog cleared and normal operations were established at around 5pm.  That is a pretty efficient recovery operation at such a busy airport.

 

How long would you have liked it to take?