Death-Defying Aerial Experience

The Nice recap will be forthcoming in the next day or so. I am just gathering my thoughts, sorting pictures, and going over some things I have written. I will give you a teaser though...it was easily one of the best weekends of my life. Now we all know that everywhere I go the threat of chaos is always nearby...so what was this weekend's near-disaster you may be asking. The flight home.

Its started like any other...uncomfortable and surrounded by unpleasant foreigners (they were pleasant but I was only interested in speaking either French or English and that was not on the menu). I had the March issue of the Atlantic Monthly on hand, which I was absolutely thrilled to get a hold of because there is an article in it that I have been dying to read and all you can find in Denmark is pop culture magazines and pornography. So I am reading my Atlantic and starving since you have to buy food on Scandinavian Air, but things are on the up-and-up. As we approach Copenhagen the weather is typically disgusting but what could you expect. "We are beginning our final approach into Copenhagen...blah, blah...we should be on the ground in 10 minutes."

As we descend all of a sudden the plane pulls up quickly, enough to make all the passengers gasp. The pilot gets on and says that there is a minor problem with the flaps and we have to abort the landing. He assures us that the problem will be taken care of quickly and our landing will be normal. After about 20 minutes we start down again, and again the plane jerks back up. The pilot says something in some nonsensical Nordic language and people are getting visibly uncomfortable. The flight attendants take seats in empty passenger seats and strap in.

I am quite anxious because the pilot is not translating his updates in English. After a while more of flying in circles we begin down again and again the plane is brought back up quickly. At this point a general panic is starting to set in on the plane. Any time there is the slightest bump people gasp or yell out loud. This time the pilot says that we have again had to abort the landing.

I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical from the start. How were these guys going to fix the flaps on the wings from inside the airplane? I thought that my arch-nemesis, the commercial airliner, had finally decide to destroy me like all those nightmares. Inside it was a bit of vindication against all those who said I was nuts for being so afraid of flying. Anyway, at this point the pilot says that the flaps have "failed" and we must try "another method" to land the plane. To me this means that he is going to wing-it, no pun intended. It reminded me of when I had gone skiing as a youngster and in my first run I realized that I had forgotten how to stop. I needed to do something to keep from plowing into the people waiting for the lift, I needed "another method." So I took a dive and slid to a stop on my face. The pilot was going to find "another method!" Well, that's fine I suppose...what the heck was I going to do?

It should be noted that my fear of airplanes is not a fear of passing in a crash, not a fear of pain, its a fear of how I would react to a catastrophe in an airplane. If my premonitions and nightmares are right then I would behave like a raving lunatic. The truth was, despite that fact that I was scared out of my wits, I just sat there and held unto the chair in front of me while staring out the window at the wing. Maybe I could will it into operating properly! I actually don't think a single thought crossed my mind...I was just kind of frozen in fear.

So we start the "other method," and as far as I can tell this consisted of flying in circles and dropping really fast every once in a while and then pulling back up a little. It felt like they would just let the plane fall out of the air and then pull it up a little bit. Every time we dropped, as if nobody knew it was coming, people would scream. Now my stomach is no novice to discomfort...I would even call it battle-tested, but I was almost positive I was about to throw up...part from the fast up and down and part because I was getting so scared.

To end the suspense I am sure you are all gripped in at the moment, the plane landed without incident. As we rolled down the runway I noticed that a small cavalry of fire trucks and ambulances had assembled to await our fiery plummet from the grey heavens above. Not today! No, I will live to sit through my disgustingly boring human rights class tomorrow. After we had stopped the pilot said he called for the emergency vehicles when the flaps failed and that it was standard in kind of a situation to do so.

The pilot met us as we got out to answer anyone's questions and the airline had arranged for people who were in shock or something to speak to counselors and they asked us if we were alright as we got off. I thought maybe I would talk to a counselor about my general anxiety, insomnia, and psycho-somatic stomach ailment...but was I alright? Of course! I just spent one of the best weekends of my life on the French Riviera.

In all seriousness though everything is fine and I was quite shaken up. One of the more frightening things I have ever endured and I am already irrational about air travel. When I saw the emergency vehicles on the ground I thought that this might have been a pretty serious thing. Well, two months in Europe, a fall down a flight of stairs followed by a week in a hospital, and a near catastrophic flight and I am sitting here with a smile on my face because I am about to look through my Marc Chagall book that I picked up at the Chagall Gallery in Nice!