Boarding done. Passengers in seats. Ready to take off. Then, the Captain of the Emirates Airbus 380 bound to Dubai from Toronto gets on the loud speaker to tell us that there is a small technical problem in the plane which is being taken care of. Minutes later he’s on again and to announce that the problem was solved. Then minutes later… he’s on again to say that the truck that hauls the plane has broken down… and minutes later the technical problem arises again.. The Captain announces that there is a weird electrical signal from Engine 3 which they are investigating and he hopes it will be fixed soon…

When he is on the loud speaker again it seems that the problem is not in the manual and Airbus engineers are on the case plus the Dubai ones plus.. God knows who… The few minutes wait to fix a ‘small technical problem’ lasted SIX HOURS. More than 400 passengers sat there not knowing whether the flight is going to take off and the Captain kept apologizing and sounded desperate. Off loading such a big number of passengers was not possible and the airport services were already shut down for the night.

It wasn’t till 6 hours later that the Captain got word that he got clearance to take off… The 12 hours flight became 18 hours and the crying of kids and the restlessness of  passengers was obvious. The crew’s impatience was evident too. The whole issue was not in the manual it seems.

This is the same Airbus 380 that was delayed in production for more than a year and still is suffering from ‘unforeseen problems’. The ‘technical wonder’ is not safe to fly… A passenger confided that she’s afraid to fly… and said her brother faced the same issue a week earlier on another route…

So what’s next?

Airbus needs to get their act together because they are putting the airlines in bad situations and the passengers in awful situations.