What do you do when you’re in the transit lounge of some airport and you see breaking news about a horrific plane crash somewhere? This happened to me 3 times.
As we disembarked at Changi (Sg) last Tuesday, we received breaking news about a plane crash in Brazil. Apparently 200 people died. It was an Airbus 320, similar to the one we had taken to Sg.
En route to Guangzhou
Earlier this year, I had just stepped off a plane at Jakarta airport when I saw the news on tv that an Adam Air plane had disappeared and presumed crashed. And right there on the tarmac were a couple of Adam Airs. In 2005 en route to Boston for Christmas, as I was waiting for a connecting flight at Denver airport when news broke out that a plane had gone down in Miami.
Statistically air accidents happen in clusters so you’ll understand why I had rather mixed feelings about being on an airplane on a day planes are crashing.
Baiyunport, Guangzhou
Because of how people and places are scattered in my life I can’t escape flying, never mind that Boeing tells me it’s 22 times safer flying in a commercial jet than traveling by car. I’ve had scary moments and these have been the hardest to forget :-
Chicago to Phoenix. Took off in a storm to fly through tornado alley. Pilot struggled with turbulence, changing the cruising altitude a few times. I was familiar enough with the route to know that these moves were abnormal.
New Jersey to Los Angeles. I swear we almost hit the wing of another plane when we took off.
Sg to KL. Record-breaking number of mid-air turns in a 50 minute flight. We thought the pilot was burning up fuel to prepare for a crashlanding.
KL to Bali. Cross winds. I think we landed sideways instead of a straight line. Big jolt and screech as we hit the ground.
Sg to Amsterdam. Very hard landing. A few overhead bins jolted opened and stuff fell.
Taipei to Hong Kong (Old Kai Tak). Navigating the plane between tall apartments during typhoon season to land.
San Francisco to Denver. A commuter turboprop. Hit air pocket over the mountains and I spilt my orange juice all over my pants.
San Francisco to Denver (another flight). Dead of winter. The plane skidded slightly on the icy tarmac on landing. Small screams and gasps in the cabin.
But my biggest scare by far has got to be this.
Des Moines to Rockford Illinois. A single-engine private plane piloted by a friend. At cruising altitude a big gust of wind dragged us down a few hundred feet in seconds. I think my heart got lodged in my throat that day.
What about you, what was your worst plane ride?
Hi Bryan,
I don’t travel by flights a lot since my relatives are mostly in Malaysia, and I don’t need to visit my mom (who’s in the UK now) that often because I’ve got to attend uni classes. It kinda scares me after reading all of your bad flying experiences. Does a person’s luck have anything to do with this?
I think its no different than having a car accident. The more time you spend on the road, the higher the likelihood you’ll get into one. I’ve been taking 2-4 intercontinental flights a year for the last 15 years so I guess the odds of something happening to me is a lot greater than to you.
Last Sat, I was on airasia to penang and just a few minutes after lift off, we must hv hit some dunno what air pocket, suddenly we “jumped” from our seats so high! I hv nvr encountered sucha ‘high jump’ before. Luckily didn’t s*it in my pants
The part that makes me most nervous is take off and landing. Once in the air I’m not so worried.
The same like Angel. A few years back, when a small Fokker F-50 in 1995 that killed 34 people crashed landed into a squatter home in Tawau, Sabah just a few days after that me and my mom (or was it my whole family) were flying from Tawau to Kota Kinabalu. Boy was I praying hard. I heard people started screaming and stuff…I almost wrote a last note.
Hi Kay, yes I think I read about that Tawau accident. Its terrible.