The morning of Dec. 27, 1991, I was traveling in uniform as a passenger on Scandinavian Airlines System Flight 751. The aircraft, a McDonnell Douglas MD-81, was bound from Stockholm, Sweden, to Copenhagen, Denmark, from where I was to command a scheduled flight for SAS to Madrid, Spain. I had a second-row seat in the aircraft, which had been parked outside overnight in very bad weather, with snow and rain.
After the aircraft was deiced, the takeoff roll was started on Runway 08 at Arlanda Airport. About 25 seconds after rotation, I heard an engine surge, an appalling sound similar to a cannon firing. I counted four or five more surges and started to get worried.
Looking through the open cockpit door, I saw a lot of warnings on the overhead annunciation panel but had the impression that nothing was happening between the two pilots — no giving of orders, no dialogue, no hands on the throttles or other arm movements. Then I got really worried, wondering if the captain had suffered a h…
