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I was in 4D on the ATL/MCO engine failure flight. Naturally, the failure should not have happened and I fully support a thorough investigation. If the NTSB asked me to testify at a hearing, I would do my best to comply.

The incident itself, while serious, was relatively benign. The failure was momentary. In the cabin, we felt a mild thud, which, had we not been well on our way to cruise altitude by that time, I would have attributed to a bird strike.

I did not feel any yaw in our trajectory during the incident but a neighboring passenger on his way to the forward lavatory indicated that he did, meaning that, unlike an automobile engine with a bad spark plug missing a compression cycle, we lost the starboard engine for about a second.

Everyone remained calm. Sleeping passengers continued to snooze, for the most part. On the whole, it could have been much worse. Delta also gave me 5,000 miles for the hassle, even without my asking.

My complaints were:

1) The captain clearly has spent time with Delta attorneys because, beyond announcing that the aircraft was firmly under his control after we made our u-turn, he never told us specifically what happened beyond an assurance of our safety and that ATC had cleared our return.

2) This was the last Orlando flight of the day. ATL had a spare 757-200 but the pilots timed out. When we parked at our gate in Atlanta, after about a 5-minute delay so that firefighters could perform a quick visual examination of the starboard side of the bird, the lead flight attendant merely instructed us to disembark and follow instructions from the gate agent as to the assignment of our new gate.

I would be surprised had she not known that the pilots’ rest rules would prevent them from operating the replacement bird. So, we sat at the gate with an aircraft ready to go, complete with original and replacement flight attendants, but no pilots, for 2 hours. The communication of this delay did not occur until we arrived at the replacement gate and asked the agent when we would begin boarding.