Many decades ago I was a young buck living in Michigan's UP. It was when Republic Airlines (precursor to Northwest/Delta) was flying Convair 580's an overpowered 2-engine turboprop. Very loud inside, too. We took off from Ironwood in the Western UP, south shore of Lake Superior. As we were climbing, heading generally south toward Chicago, the left side of the aircraft shuddered, the prop stopped turning and the plane dipped down on the left. There was a flight attendant just in front of me and the sudden drop caused her to flop down in the aisle. In the ensuing seconds, the pilot trimmed the plane with one engine left to a level flight and began to slowly spiral downward from our 10,000' altitude...we landed in Rhinelander, Wisconsin...safely, I might add.
As we were all safely and orderly disembarking the aircraft onto the tarmac, around the corner onto the far end of the tarmac came the emergency vehicles, sirens blaring and the passengers all looked at each other and said "kinda late, doncha think?". Anyway, the airline put us all up at the Rhinelander Holiday Inn, bought us dinner and drinks...they had a band playing in the hotel lounge and I ended up dancing with some gal who later identified herself as one the Emergency Responders. She said "we had no idea what to expect when they called us out there...for all we knew we were going to find a wreckage!"
Glad to be able to tell the story, cuz it coulda ended that day.
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