My flight was waiting on the runway when the captain made an announcement. "We've had some trouble with the plane's air conditioning system. In a plane, the air conditioner controls the oxygen levels so we need to make sure it's working before we can take off. Restarting the air conditioning unit hasn't worked, so we're going to power down the aircraft and power it back on. These modern airplanes are all computer controlled, you know, so they're not very reliable." The pilot powered down the airplane, powered it back up essentially, rebooted the airplane and our flight continued without incident. Needless to say, I was especially glad to deplane at the end of that particular trip. |