Flight TG925 25/05/06

When you have spent thousands of hours flying like I have, You know when something is not quite right. Such was the case with flight TG925 from Munich to Bangkok on 25/5/06. Tke off was normal but it soon became apparent that the noise and vibration where above the level that you would normally expect. We later realised that we had not heard the, what I had always considered to be, disconcerting thump as the landing gear retracted. The pilot made an announcement which due to the noise, the poor sound quaity of the public address system and the thick accent of the pilot I doubt anyone understood. All I could discern where his last words about "being under control". We continued to climb and eventually the pilot made a second announcement whereupon we motioned to the stewardess who up to now had remained steadfastly in her seat to come to us. She informed us that there was a problem with the "gear" and that we were heading for Frankfurt where they had spare parts. "Don't worry" was the message but when you are at 40,000 feet knowing that there is something wrong with the landing gear that is hard to do. I now understand the notion of a "dry" mouth. We were apparently going to return to Munich originally but now the pilot had decided on Frankfurt and it will remain a mystery why it took over 2 hours to accomplish what by all accounts is normally a 40 minute flight. In any event, we landed at Frankfurt much to the surprise of many of the passengers, many of whom didn't realise that we were going to land. Most of them were German so had little chance of understanding the announcements and many were peering out of the aircraft trying to get a glimpse of the airport name. The Thai air crew receive no marks out of ten for the way they handled the situation as they must have realised that the communication was inadequate. The passengers including myself were however obviously happy to be on the ground as a silent plane suddenly became a hubub of conversation and laughter as soon as we touched down. It was by now midnight and we were put up in the Sheraton Airport hotel for the night with a promise of a flight the day after at midday. In any event, landing gear fixed we eventually took off at 2:55pm minus a few passengers who didn't show for an uneventful flght to Bangkok. I did however listen very carefully to landing gear being lowered!