A Matter of Life and Death
I should've known I wasn't going to get off lightly on Friday. After two weeks with two parents in and out of hospital, the death of a grandparent, and a 5.30 wake-up call to get to Guernsey for the funeral at the end of a busy week at work (70 new overseas students, inductions, socials and webinars) it was surely inevitable that my plane would do something exciting, like threaten to crash into the English Channel.
Let's get one thing straight. I cannot stand Guernsey. This has no reflection on Guernsey, really, but on its frustrating inaccessibility: if you ever manage to successfully get there (fog meant I once had a two-day holiday at Gatwick airport, the highlight of which was playing constant air hockey with my dad and going to the now-closed C&A in nearby Crawley) you then realise you've inadvertantly arrived at the Hotel California - you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. At Christmas, due to the snow, we had as glorious 3-hour delay at Gatwick Airport, happily ensconsed in Wetherspoons with half of Ireland trying to get home to Dublin. (One man, on asking us to keep an eye on his laptop when he went to the bar, quipped "twenty years ago if an Irishman asked you to keep an eye on his bag you'd run a mile, wouldn't you?") My dad was less lucky on the way home, getting stuck for almost three days at Guernsey Airport and paying for three flights with three different aurlines in the process, some of which has never been refunded.
Friday, though, was different. For a start, our flight there arrived bang on time - a newsworthy event, as my preamble has suggested. This, of course, was too good to be true.
Our flight back was predictably delayed, and we sat in Guernsey's Flatpacked-From-Ikea airport and grumbled about the inevitability of the whole thing, along with 100 or so other people. Eventually we boarded and uneventfully set off in teeming rain back to Gatwick. Almost half way into the flight, while the staff were busily serving up underwhelming drinks in plastic cups, there was a bit of a kerfuffle. Buzzers went off and the cabin crew abandoned their drinks trollies and chattered into phones at either end of the cabin. Then, with fixed grins on their faces, they took the drinks trolley away. The captain, with that marvellously unflustered air that they must specially train you in at Pilot School, came over the tannoy and announced "Erm bit of bad news, folks. The erm technical problem that delayed the aircraft seems to be back, so for your own safety we're going to need to return to Guernsey. It unfortunately isn't safe to carry on to Gatwick."
And that was it. And that was what scared us. Normally the pilot would say something along the lines of "Well folks we've got a bit of a technical fault, basically [insert technical bollocks here] and this means we'll need to return to Guernsey." Passengers would be reassurred to know that it was only the Technical Bollocks that had gone wrong, this was entirely plausible and was thus delaying our holiday, and we would happily have grumbled our way back to Guernsey. But this time, nothing. The plane then did what felt like a u-turn and we began hurtling back towards Guernsey at double the speed we'd been travelling at before. Thus followed possibly the scariest 15 minutes of my life. The lights went out; the seatbelt signs all went on and the staff strapped themselves into their special seats and refused to get up even when various passengers started to throw up and/or hyperventilate. We hit what felt like the worst turbulence I've ever experienced (having done this trip over 100 times during my life) and every noe and then the plane dropped what felt like several metres, like being in a lift. Someone towards the back of the plane rather unhelpfully announced that he could see smoke; people screamed as we plummeted towards the sea with no sight of land yet; the lady next to us crossed herself, kissed the St Christopher around her neck and began to pray. We hit the runway at a terrifying speed in the most uncomfortable landing imaginable, and careered down the runway on one wheel, until we eventually came to an improbable halt, as fire engines came towards our stricken plane. Several people burst into tears and the staff eventually got up and apologised for that "being a bit scary.2 A BIT SCARY? What planet were you on? Characteristically unfazed, the pilot's voice came onto the intercom again, saying "well, that wasn't much fun, was it?"
We were then sent back into the terminal and left there with no news for over an hour (a cup of tea at the very least would have been nice!) The upshot of the whole thing was we did eventually get home, two and a half hours late and still shaking.
So, on the bright side, we're not dead. I felt as though I'd over-reacted rather to the whole thing (although at the time I did my usual, somewhat predictable incessant chattering, smiling, asking everyone if they were alright and grinning encouragingly at the staff and thanking them, even though they'd been ultimately useless.) I was heartened, in a strange way, to find that a friend of mine who'd been on the same flight had actually been so terrified by the whole thing that she'd gone home rather than try again. Posts on her Facebook have referred to it as a "near-death experience" which on the one hand sounds a bit far-fetched, but, having been through the same thing, I see where she's coming from. It has, though, raised all sorts of questions about Facebook. Who, she mused, would update her status, had she died? It's a fair question: I found out about a friend's death from people suddenly writing "RIP" on his Facebook page, before a mutual friend had actually had time to phone up and tell me. More positively, someone I've never met who'd seen my posts on my friend and fellow traveller's page sent me a message asking if I was OK, and I appreciate that hugely. This, along with messages from friends asking about the funeral and my genereal welfare, serve as a reminder that, generally, people are nice, and even when everything is crap, there are actually little sparks of positivity in an otherwise bleak world.
And I'm still not dead, which is always a bonus.
Let's get one thing straight. I cannot stand Guernsey. This has no reflection on Guernsey, really, but on its frustrating inaccessibility: if you ever manage to successfully get there (fog meant I once had a two-day holiday at Gatwick airport, the highlight of which was playing constant air hockey with my dad and going to the now-closed C&A in nearby Crawley) you then realise you've inadvertantly arrived at the Hotel California - you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. At Christmas, due to the snow, we had as glorious 3-hour delay at Gatwick Airport, happily ensconsed in Wetherspoons with half of Ireland trying to get home to Dublin. (One man, on asking us to keep an eye on his laptop when he went to the bar, quipped "twenty years ago if an Irishman asked you to keep an eye on his bag you'd run a mile, wouldn't you?") My dad was less lucky on the way home, getting stuck for almost three days at Guernsey Airport and paying for three flights with three different aurlines in the process, some of which has never been refunded.
Friday, though, was different. For a start, our flight there arrived bang on time - a newsworthy event, as my preamble has suggested. This, of course, was too good to be true.
Our flight back was predictably delayed, and we sat in Guernsey's Flatpacked-From-Ikea airport and grumbled about the inevitability of the whole thing, along with 100 or so other people. Eventually we boarded and uneventfully set off in teeming rain back to Gatwick. Almost half way into the flight, while the staff were busily serving up underwhelming drinks in plastic cups, there was a bit of a kerfuffle. Buzzers went off and the cabin crew abandoned their drinks trollies and chattered into phones at either end of the cabin. Then, with fixed grins on their faces, they took the drinks trolley away. The captain, with that marvellously unflustered air that they must specially train you in at Pilot School, came over the tannoy and announced "Erm bit of bad news, folks. The erm technical problem that delayed the aircraft seems to be back, so for your own safety we're going to need to return to Guernsey. It unfortunately isn't safe to carry on to Gatwick."
And that was it. And that was what scared us. Normally the pilot would say something along the lines of "Well folks we've got a bit of a technical fault, basically [insert technical bollocks here] and this means we'll need to return to Guernsey." Passengers would be reassurred to know that it was only the Technical Bollocks that had gone wrong, this was entirely plausible and was thus delaying our holiday, and we would happily have grumbled our way back to Guernsey. But this time, nothing. The plane then did what felt like a u-turn and we began hurtling back towards Guernsey at double the speed we'd been travelling at before. Thus followed possibly the scariest 15 minutes of my life. The lights went out; the seatbelt signs all went on and the staff strapped themselves into their special seats and refused to get up even when various passengers started to throw up and/or hyperventilate. We hit what felt like the worst turbulence I've ever experienced (having done this trip over 100 times during my life) and every noe and then the plane dropped what felt like several metres, like being in a lift. Someone towards the back of the plane rather unhelpfully announced that he could see smoke; people screamed as we plummeted towards the sea with no sight of land yet; the lady next to us crossed herself, kissed the St Christopher around her neck and began to pray. We hit the runway at a terrifying speed in the most uncomfortable landing imaginable, and careered down the runway on one wheel, until we eventually came to an improbable halt, as fire engines came towards our stricken plane. Several people burst into tears and the staff eventually got up and apologised for that "being a bit scary.2 A BIT SCARY? What planet were you on? Characteristically unfazed, the pilot's voice came onto the intercom again, saying "well, that wasn't much fun, was it?"
We were then sent back into the terminal and left there with no news for over an hour (a cup of tea at the very least would have been nice!) The upshot of the whole thing was we did eventually get home, two and a half hours late and still shaking.
So, on the bright side, we're not dead. I felt as though I'd over-reacted rather to the whole thing (although at the time I did my usual, somewhat predictable incessant chattering, smiling, asking everyone if they were alright and grinning encouragingly at the staff and thanking them, even though they'd been ultimately useless.) I was heartened, in a strange way, to find that a friend of mine who'd been on the same flight had actually been so terrified by the whole thing that she'd gone home rather than try again. Posts on her Facebook have referred to it as a "near-death experience" which on the one hand sounds a bit far-fetched, but, having been through the same thing, I see where she's coming from. It has, though, raised all sorts of questions about Facebook. Who, she mused, would update her status, had she died? It's a fair question: I found out about a friend's death from people suddenly writing "RIP" on his Facebook page, before a mutual friend had actually had time to phone up and tell me. More positively, someone I've never met who'd seen my posts on my friend and fellow traveller's page sent me a message asking if I was OK, and I appreciate that hugely. This, along with messages from friends asking about the funeral and my genereal welfare, serve as a reminder that, generally, people are nice, and even when everything is crap, there are actually little sparks of positivity in an otherwise bleak world.
And I'm still not dead, which is always a bonus.
posted by RLS at 1:28 pm
2 comments
