This is my personal account as a passenger on United Flight 959 on Monday, August 27, 2012, scheduled for travel from London at Heathrow Airport (LHR) to Chicago at O’Hare Airport (ORD), where I would have boarded a connecting flight back home to Sacramento (SMF).  After departing from London, the plane experienced equipment malfunctions related to engine problems, and returned to Heathrow for an emergency landing, utilizing just one of two engines, after which the landing gear reportedly caught fire (though there are conflicting accounts on this) on the runway and the landing gear and overheated engines were extinguished by ground crew.  A harrowing experience, and one of the only news stories that I could find about this specific incident lacked details, included one photo, and had a one line statement from a United spokesperson (“United Airlines’ flight UA959 bound for Chicago returned to Heathrow on Monday after experiencing an unexpected engine surge; [t]he aircraft landed safely and without incident“). I thought it would be appropriate to memorialize the experience from the point of view of a passenger on the aircraft.  According to international news reports, this flight was the third in ten days that had engine problems resulting in emergency landings for the carrier. [Read more…]