In 2006, I flew from Johannesburg to Cape Town. About half an hour after takeoff, the captain made the following announcement:
“Ladies and gentlemen, those of you sitting on the right side of the aircraft will notice that one of our slats (leading-edge flaps) has become distorted. Don’t worry, we have been trained to handle such situations.”
I was sitting on the left side of the plane, but briefly went to the other side to take this picture:
After that, the aircraft descended to 20,000 feet, where they realigned the flaps and slaps and folded in the damaged leading-edge slat. Then we climbed back up to cruising altitude.
But it wasn’t long before it looked like this:
The captain then announced that they couldn’t retract the engine mid-flight and that we would continue to Cape Town at about half our normal speed and at an altitude of 20,000 feet. Everyone had to sit down and wasn’t allowed to get up again for the remainder of the flight.
It was quite a strange experience to fly slowly and at such a low altitude in a 737-800.
We finally landed in Cape Town about an hour late, where all the fire trucks and ambulances were waiting for us on the runway. Fortunately, nothing happened, and we all got off the plane with a great sense of relief.
I can only imagine how hard the pilots had to jerk the rudder to the left to compensate for the braking effect of the defective leading edge slat.