Airplane diaries - Episode 1

When I was a child, I always wanted to be an airplane pilot and loved anything and everything to do with airplanes. In fact, I remember forcing my mom into buying me a toy airplane on my 11th birthday - at that age, she obviously expected me to be asking for something like board games! but there I was going woosh..woosh with my plastic airplane (in hindsight it does feel stupid, but hey I was a child..). Well, today I am not an airline pilot and if my skills at Flight Simulator should be any indicator of the kind of pilot I would be, the world should probably thank my destiny for not allowing me to become one.

However, destiny couldn't keep me away from planes for too long. In my job I have had to travel a lot within the US and international. Travelling means that you spend a lot of time inside the aluminium tube (i.e the plane) or at the airport waiting for it.  And I have a few memorable  moments (some bizarre, some quiet ordinary) from my trips that I think are worth sharing through this blog

Episode 1

Trip : Cincinatti to Newark

Type of Plane : Embraer RJ145 (the little brazilian jet - you know, the kind that bounces in the air to a pigeons fart)

Why I remember this flight : 

Boarding is complete, the doors have been locked and everyone is seated with their belts fastened. I'am in seat 1B (just behind the cockpit) listening to my ipod and checking out the cute blonde flight attendant seated diagonally opposite to me. The captain proudly announces that our flight has been cleared for take off.  

We taxi smoothly for a while and then just before the plane gets to the main runway, it suddenly comes to a screeching halt ! If not for the seat belts, I would have found myself in the cockpit (at least partially fulfilling my dream of becoming a pilot).  The cute blonde flight attendant has a perplexed look on her face, so we figure that she is about as clueless as we are... 

A few seconds later, the phone next to her rings, she picks it and just listens. Then she pushes another button and on the PA she announces "Ladies and Gentlemen, the captain has detected a malfunction and has requested the services of a flight engineer, we will be ready for take off soon after this has been resolved..we apologize..blah blah blah"  

So, we patiently wait for the flight engineer and since I am in seat 1B, I get to see how the events unfold. About ten minutes later the flight engineer drives up to the plane and gets into it. He is dressed in his overhauls and carries a toolkit (he reminds me of Bob the Builder, I don't know why). At this point the cockpit door opens and I get to see the captain and the co-pilot. They are both looking at a yellow light on the dashboard that is blinking and as the engineer walks in they mumble something to him. I try poking my ears out and hear a few words such as "I think it is broken" , "I will try to reboot" and "not sure if that is safe". At this point I slowly begin to get nervous.I then see the pilot turn on/off a few switches, push/pull a lever and push some more buttons at the advise of Bob the builder. The yellow light continues to blink and the pilot uses the 'f' word and mutters something else.The three of them then turn around, look at us passengers with a confused look and close the cockpit door behind them! Now, I'am beginning to sweat.I want to get up and say that this is not helping at all.But I know I'am at their mercy now in this malfunctioning aluminium tube and don't want to distract them to make things worse. Anyway, I am privately hoping that they cancel this flight, take it back to the gate and put us on another one.I am prepared to wait at the airport however long it takes. 

After 15 agonizing minutes, I experience a deja vu - the phone rings, the cute blonde flight attendant picks it, listens, nods her head and finally pushes the PA button to let us in on the secret. She announces that the flight engineer has identified the problem to be a defective part that will have to be replaced. So, naturally the next thing I expect to hear is that we will be pulled back to the gate, deplaned and transferred to another one. Instead, she says that the engineer will drive back to the airline workshop to fetch a new part and we should be taking off soon after he replaces it ! I don't seem to like this idea and the guy beside me agrees - he looks equally nervous. 

After her announcement, the blonde flight attendant (she doesn't seem cute to me anymore) walks around the plane to check on the passengers. We ask her if everything is OK and if getting off this plane would be a better option. She smiles, looks at us as if we are labrador puppies and says there is nothing to worry, that it happens all the time and once the part is replaced, we will be good to go. I think to myself yeah right ! and what is the guarantee that the replaced part will not fail when we are at 20,000 feet! there can always be the first time, right? maybe we should not be putting this plane into the air until it is fully tested? 

Well, nobody seemed to care about what I thought anyway. Our Bob the builder returned with a replacement part a short while later.I saw the replacement part he was holding in his hand like a trophy - it was a small box with some wires popping out of it. He went into the cockpit mumbling again to the pilots, seemed to be doing something behind the door and then walked out wishing the pilots "Have a good flight guys" and I could swear that he looked at me and said "Best of luck"

A side note: I am a brave guy when it comes to roller coasters (for the record I have done Kingda Ka and Nitro at Six Flags, Kraken at Seaworld and Hulk at Universal Studios).  They don't scare me, in fact the taller they get the more excited I get. BUT, when it comes to flying I'am a bit more apprehensive - probably because once airborne, planes don't cling on to any rails unlike roller coasters. So, quiet understandably this whole episode made me pretty nervous and I was praying the entire trip back to Newark...

How did it end? Well, the plane took off after a 90 minute delay and those were the longest 90 minutes of my life..and after the plane took off, I think my heart stopped beating for the next 2 hours until it landed at Newark.  From that day on, I try not to sit in the front row where I might get a direct view of such events that "happen all the time". I've wised up and learnt that there is a lot of meaning to the saying "Ignorance is bliss"

I have a few more real life experiences while travelling that have given me the shivers and will post them when I get the time...