I'm watching the All-Star game and a commercial for a local news station comes on saying a "piece of a delta airplane comes off in flight and lands on a street in blah blah" then shows this small crater in the middle of a road and a picture of a MD80. anyone know what happened?

 

Part of an engine decided it wanted to stay in STL.

 

Delta jet lands safely after panel falls off
By Ken Leiser
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Wednesday, Jul. 16 2008

ST. LOUIS — A cone-shaped panel the size of a small wastebasket fell off a Delta Air Lines jet that was having engine trouble shortly after its Tuesday morning takeoff from Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, officials said.

The debris landed on a road in St. Charles County — taking a chunk out of the pavement — but nobody was injured and no other property was damaged on the ground, according to airline and Federal Aviation Administration officials.

The cone-shaped metal panel apparently came off the plane's engine. The FAA described it as an 18-by-20-inch tail cone.

FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro said Delta Flight 989 was bound for Atlanta when the pilot heard a loud bang and one of the engines shut down after takeoff about 6:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The MD-88 carrying 114 passengers and five crew members returned to Lambert and landed normally...

 

Glad no one on the ground got hurt

 

or in the air

 

Just saw this on the news myself. Some dude was b****ing about how bad Delta's customer service was. The anchor actually laughed and was wondering how this had anything to do with customer service. I assume he didn't get a free ticket or something out of it! Anyway, good thing no one was injured.

 

Saw the report on the news last night. Based on the chunk of concrete it took out of the road it's pure luck nobody got hurt. The excellent reporting mentioned that passengers saw the engine wasn't turning. I wonder how many people were looking at the stator and didn't realize it?

Kudos to the crew. Well done.