A Flight to Remember

I'm not typically a nervous flyer. I've done it often enough over the years to actually look forward to the thrill of takeoff and the relief of touchdown.

That being said...it doesn't take a whole lot for me to become a nervous flyer.

I've experienced just about every sort of delay on the ground. Everything from hurricanes to lightning storms to, well, there was that one time when someone on the tarmac backed their truck into a plane. A big plane. A DC-10. How exactly does that happen? And how do you explain that on the insurance incidence report?

I could write a book about the hours I've spent visiting connection cities courtesy of the airlines. An extra night in Phoenix, another in Houston. A night in Chicago where I was greeted in the morning by a cockroach relaxing on the bristles of my toothbrush.

There was that time when Becky and I were coming back from Las Vegas. She was sure that she would break my run of bad airport luck. We boarded the plane on time, pushed away from the gate on schedule. Got in line for takeoff only to discover that one of the computers on the plane required rebooting. Simple enough, except if we went back to the gate, we've have to go through the security procedure. So it seemed like it would just be faster to find a quiet spot of runway to stop and reboot - but that's easier said than done in Sin City. Three hours later they finally got the computer rebooted - just in time to discover that we didn't have enough gas to get back to Cleveland. So in the end, we had to go to the gate anyways. So...four hours later...

Then how about the time my mom and I were flying back from Denver. We boarded on time, pushed back from the gate - even flew across the Midwest with time on our side. And then, on final approach, a snow storm closed the Cleveland airport. On final approach. As we were making our descent. Seriously? And to top that off, we couldn't gamble that we had enough gas to circle the airport until it reopened so we were re-routed to Detroit. Unbelievable, right?

But fortunately, all my airline adventures have happened on the ground. Knock on wood that this is a pattern that will continue.

Except...

I had one of those flights on final approach to DIA returning from vacation in Indiana. Nothing tragic, nothing too crazy - hardly worth mentioning except that it made for a flight to remember. And was enough to make me a nervous flyer, at least at the time.

It was a rather boring flight. I spent most of the time zoning out to Mark Harmon and NCIS (thank you USA Network for mini-NCIS marathons). And I was looking forward to landing and zooming home to my puppy dog. Captain announced final approach and I began to anticipate getting off the flying tin can.

As we made our descent into DIA, we hit a patch of turbulence. Not rock the plane violently turbulence, more like the small hills on a roller coaster. The kind that give you butterflies in your stomach - normally a good sensation, and not overly concerning though I did worry about hitting an air-pocket that would drop the plane further than we had to drop. And then...

All of a sudden, instead of descending into the airport, we started climbing. Engines screamed like on takeoff, which seemed a little odd, considering that we were coming in for a landing. And then we banked hard to the right. Definitely more of a bank that I've ever experienced in a plane. Enough that had I been standing up, there's a good chance I would've ended up sitting in 20F instead of 20A. And I'm not sure the gentleman already occupying that seat would have thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

At this point, I had a pretty nervous hold on the armrest and was trying to not get creative with my thought processes. Mark Harmon was gone from my screen in what the standard message assured me was due to normal aircraft movement. Except it's not really very reassuring, as I'm pretty sure that they don't have a standard message that reads "Signal lost due to extremely unusual and dangerous maneuvers - all hope is lost."

So to distract myself, I looked out the window. At the beautiful lightning display. Nice, right? But I'm sure it's heat lightning...oh, except for those giant bolts. Okay - looking out the window wasn't proving to be the distraction I was hoping for.

And now my thought process got creative. Why didn't we land? Are these evasive maneuvers? Does the pilot know something he's not sharing? How am I suppose to judge the mood of the flight attendants if I can't see them? How fast can I turn on my cell phone and text everyone I know? What would I say? Could I text a farewell message without feeling the need to use proper grammar and punctuation?

Oh, and why has the emergency lighting all of a sudden come on? Exit signs, floor lighting. I don't imagine the emergency slides at those emergency exits will do a whole lot of good if the plane isn't actually on the ground. Does my floatation device also double as a parachute? And seriously - if the oxygen masks drop from the ceiling, I'm totally going to pee my pants.

Turns out, in the end, that the flight pattern they had us approaching on didn't leave us with enough runway to actually stop the plane, so the landing was aborted and we had to come in on a different approach. In the end, my creative juices got flowing just enough to create borderline panic, though I managed to avoid crying, screaming, hyperventilating and rationalizing. I did, however, probably leave deep finger-shaped indentations in the armrest.