Take a Gander

I love to travel. I love to visit other countries. I love to experience other cultures. What I do not love is flying. It didn't used to bother me, but somewhere in the midst of the last 5 years, in which I have been on about 45 flights, I realized that I really don't enjoy flying all that much. I feel too out of control when we start bouncing around and I especially do not like landings. Even though I know they are an essential element in the process of actually getting off the aircraft, I still dread them.

There is something about the roar of the air as the brakes are applied and the wings are used to slow us down. I guess that sound reminds me of how fast we are actually going and how much force it takes to stop a vehicle the size of an airplane.

A few weeks ago I was on the second leg of my trip to Kiev, Ukraine. We took off out of Chicago's O'Hare airport en route to Frankfurt, Germany in a double decker jumbo jet hauling 350 people (yeah, that's big). Flight time: 8 hours, 30 minutes.

Three hours or so into the flight, we were cruising at an altitude of 35,000ft at about 650mph. I was chillin' in my aisle seat, with my shoes off, jamming to one of my favorite tunes on my mp3 player. Actually, as much as I hate to admit it, I was listening to "Funky Town" by Lipps Inc, and thinking of my daughter Kamica because she always plays the "Air cowbell" (similar to air guitar), whenever that song comes on.

As I sat there, I began to smell some sort of aerosol-ish smell, similar to hairspray. I thought maybe one of the girls behind me was primping or something. The smell got stronger, I thought to myself 'Nobody uses that much hairspray on an airplane'. I thought it was coming from behind me so I looked around, but nothing really seemed amiss back there. So I settled back into my little slice of personal space as I contemplated the smell while doing disco moves in my head.

Within a couple of seconds my contemplation was suddenly interrupted by the unmistakable sound of the air brakes in all their glory and the simultaneous motion of the nose of the plane tilting downward. As I ripped my ear buds out, I heard bells ringing and saw the seat belt lights flashing. And flight attendants scurrying about.

First thoughts: Where did I pack that extra toilet paper?
Then: Why the heck would the pilot be putting the breaks on when we are 5 miles above the Earth? It's not like we can just pull over and check under the hood. Besides, aren't we over the Atlantic?

At that point, the flight attendants were in a fluster, getting things put away, closing curtains, getting people back to their seats. The whole time the sound of the air brakes was resonating throughout the cabin as the entire plane was shaking rapidly.

As I was double checking that my life vest was under my seat and calculating the water temperature of the North Atlantic, the pilot came on the PA. He gave a brief explanation of what was happening, barely audible over the rumble of air brakes. Unfortunately, being that it was a Lufthansa flight, the announcement was in German!

Those who understood the German announcement started excitedly chatting to each other with worried looks on their faces, while those of us who didn't speak German were anxiously awaiting the announcement in English.

Meanwhile, the flight attendants continued their frenzy to get things under control and were telling people to stow their tray table and put their seat in it's upright position.

I thought to myself, "Hey, if we're going down, I may as well be comfortable till we get there." so I left my seat reclined a bit.

The boy across the aisle from me still had his meal tray and was having problems closing his table. I took the tray from him and tried to hand it to the stewardess as she rushed by, but she just said "There's no time, put it under the seat" and she kept going.

No time? What do you mean "No Time"? No time before what? I slid what was left of the kids last supper under the seat in front of me. Finally the Pilot came on and said in English "Smoke has been found in the cabin, we are making an emergency landing".

Where? Wait, where are we landing? An aircraft carrier? Gilligans Island? I had visions of somebody calling me "Little Buddy" for the next 10 years as we frivolously squandered any and all legitimate rescue opportunities.

Over the next 10 minutes or so there were a couple periodic announcements like:
"So far, we believe the situation is under control, but we are going to land to be sure"
"Everything is OK, so far, but we are going to land and have it checked".

Those two words "so far" were in every subsequent announcement, not exactly comforting.

It was dark out, nobody could see anything. No airport. No city. No lights. No land. Nothing.

About 12-15 minutes the initial incident (but what seemed at the time to be much longer), the brakes suddenly came on full force again followed almost immediately by: BAM! We hit the runway and bounced, we did a little roll to the right, a little roll to the left, then we hit the runway again. I was bouncing around in my seat and then thrust into the seat in front of me as the breaks took hold. The plane was shaking and we could see flashing lights outside in the foggy night air.

As we came to a stop, a loud round of applause and cheering erupted. The pilot announced: "Ladies and Gentlemen please remain seated and try to stay calm as we wait for the fire brigade to check out the situation." Yeah, waiting for a fire brigade usually calms me right down...

But apparently there were no inferno of flames and they wanted us to move closer to the terminal or something, because the pilot came back on and said that we "needed to wait for a few minutes before taxiing to the terminal because the brakes had overheated and needed to cool down." Well, duh, I wonder how that happened.

So there I was, sitting in seat 47C looking up the aisle at a couple of firemen in full gear walking toward me, not exactly what you expect to see on an airplane.

The bottom line isn't very dramatic, apparently a coffee maker had blown up or shorted out or something and started a small fire in the galley. Fire extinguishers had been used to douse it (hence the hairspray smell).

As we sat on the tarmac, or Walmart parking lot for all I knew, people were feeling a little more relieved and were trying to figure out exactly where we were. Nobody seemed to know (not even the flight attendants). We had to remain in our seats while the firemen checked things, while the mechanic checked things, while the old coffee maker was removed and while a new one was installed. This whole time, the back door of the plane (9 rows behind me) was opened and it was very chilly out there. Finally after a couple of hours they started passing out some water bottles and I was able to get rid of the stinkin' tray of food that had been under the seat in front of me (however, I believe a few of his left over veggies had made it up as far as First Class during the landing).

Three hours later, after they had apparently cleared the aircraft flight, the engines came back to life. Still having no idea where we were and the fact that, during the landing, the pilot had applied the brakes BEFORE we hit ground, I kinda figured we were in some little podunk airport with a short runway. But we turned that baby around, punched the gas and got the heck out of there.

Only after we were back in the air, did the GPS tell us where we had been. We had landed in Gander, New Foundland, a big island off the Eastern coast of mainland Canada. Gander is a small town on the east side of the island, the last piece of land before heading out over the Atlantic. They have less than 10,000 people, but apparently they have a pretty nice airport - and I thank them for that.

So, if you are ever in the neighborhood (or somewhere above it), you may want to consider stopping in for a Canadian Coffee Break... or maybe NOT.