No Fly Zone

Nobody would believe it today (at least nobody who knows me well), but once upon a time I spent my fair share of time flying the friendly skies.

 Vacation destinations, family events, even getting back and forth to college. Sometimes the easiest way to get there is by air, so I often found myself strapped inside a jet-propelled airtight thin-skinned aluminum tube crisscrossing the heavens. Yippee, look at me! And early on it was kind of fun. But as I got older, not so much. In fact, by my 20's I dreaded every take off and landing, and in between, never let the adult beverage cart sneak by unnoticed.

 

Excuse me, I'd like another. And don't be a stranger.

 

I can’t pinpoint exactly when I decided to become deathly afraid to fly. It’s been a mostly cumulative process. However thinking back, the wheels may have been put in motion when I threw up on my very first flight, a Christmas-time quickie from Sacramento to Los Angeles. I felt fine most of the way, too. But twenty minutes from a sunset landing at LAX, I spewed my lunch all over the seat-back in front of me. Oh sure, the barf bag was right there, but who knew you were supposed to take it out first!? Certainly not the sick little 8 year-old on his first airline adventure.

Naturally, I was embarrassed. But the stewardi were kind and understanding and even gave me a set of souvenir wings to take with me. They didn't seem to be mad at me at all. Mom was, because I'd messed up my good clothes; but even though I'd decorated their plane with a pool of vomit, the airline wasn't.

Several years later, Mom and Dad tried again. They took me and Sue with them on a trip to New York. It was late in June, and typical of summertime on the East Coast, a line of big thunderstorms from Pennsylvania to New England had popped up. To land, the pilots had no other option but to poke through them. However, Air Traffic Control wouldn't let them. Not yet anyway. Flights were stacked up all over the place and they placed us in a holding pattern

 

We spent the next hour just circling over eastern New Jersey before our plane was given the green light for final approach. As we descended through the towering storm clouds, though, the big jet got tossed around like a kid's toy. The ride down was like being in a car with really bad shocks on a mountainous dirt road and rolling over every rut and pothole as hard as possible. Except we weren’t in a car. We were several thousand feet above the ground and there was no road. Just air. 

 

The last 20 minutes of the flight were the worst; though. They seemed like two hours. The turbulence going down was so violent I thought we really were going down. It felt like the plane was going to break apart, and I never wanted to throw up so bad in my life. But my stomach was completely tied up in knots and I couldn't.

However, when we finally punched through the bottom of the cloud deck several miles out from JFK Airport, I thought I'd feel better because at least I could see Terra Firma. But the mighty 747 continued to be bitch-slapped by wind gusts so severe I thought we’d just fall out of the sky rather than land. As hail and sheets of rain bounced off the fuselage, and lightning flashed close enough to reach out and touch, it was like flying through hell's anteroom.

Mercifully, however, the flight came to an end, wobbling like a dying quail until touching down at last, smoothly and without incident. When all four wheels were safely on the ground, and a safe landing was no longer in doubt, the feeling of relief throughout the plane was palpable. I thanked God- and probably wasn't the only one- because I was sure we were going to die.

But almost two years later an Eastern Airlines 727, in bound from New Orleans, crashed and burned on the very same runway. Witnesses saw lightning strike the plane's tail, though the NTSB report named strong microbursts of wind as a contributing factor, too. Either element could've been the trigger that shoved the plane into the runway seconds from landing. Didn't make the 109 that died any less dead, though, no matter what caused the crash.

It was late June of '75, and as the news of the crash splashed all over the TV and newspapers, it wasn't lost on me that these were the exact same weather conditions- and during the same hour- on the afternoon we successfully landed on that JFK runway two years earlier. We were lucky. The people coming in from New Orleans weren't. And though only a coincidence, for years afterwards this incident haunted me every time I had to get on a plane.

And maybe I'm imagining it, but it seems like there were a rash of big commercial jet disasters in the late 70's, including a 747 that crashed on takeoff in Chicago. The newspapers even had pictures of the thing turning upside down just before it nose-dived and exploded in a huge ball of fire. For 1979, the TV coverage was pretty gruesome, too, not to mention repetitive. And after so much exposure, especially at night when I couldn't sleep, my mind would change places with the people on that plane in Chicago and try and figure out what those last moments must’ve been like.

 

Knowing the plane was going down, what was going on in their minds?  Surely, they all knew they were going to die. What was it like knowing that was about to happen?  Would they feel anything? How would I react? I don't know. But just when I thought I was past the New York crash in ‘75, I started having nightmares about this one in 1979. However, I guess the thing that sealed the deal about keeping my feet permanently on the ground was the last time I set foot in a commercial jetliner. It was the summer I turned was 25, 1980, a year after the Chicago crash. It happened after a brief visit to Sacramento, on a connecting flight heading back to Spokane between Portland and Seattle.

 

We were cruising in a benign, clear and cloud free sky. And after three days with the family, it was clear sailing for me too. Away from them and almost home, I felt mostly relaxed--which hardly ever happened when I flew. Not too long after leaving Portland, I was daydreaming, mindlessly staring out the window at the Columbia River, peacefully separating Oregon from Washington. All was well. Suddenly the 727 hit a wake of incredible clear air turbulence. And then nothing was well.

 

The plane started tumbling and bouncing around like a bulky ungraceful gymnast. Quickly, the trip became as bad or worse as flying through that thunderstorm in New York seven years before. The jet felt unbalanced, flying like a drunk might stagger out of a bar at closing. Only the Northwest Orient pilots, at around 20,000 feet were having trouble keeping the airliner level. Occasionally the big bird tipped to one side, like it wanted to make a turn. But the angle was steeper than it should’ve been. Sounding like it was struggling to right itself, I wondered if the plane had lost the will to fly, like it wanted to just give up, flop over on its back and descend into a death spiral. It didn't, but stuff started falling out of the overhead compartments and a few people even began to scream, “Oh my God!"

The disturbance came on rapidly and though it lasted less than a minute, seemed a lifetime. A lifetime I was preparing to see flash before me.

But then, like it never happened at all, the plane settled back into a normal flight pattern. Then the pilot came on, and speaking very business-like, as if this happened all the time, apologized for the "little bump of turbulence" we’d encountered.  Little bump?!  Little freaking bump my ass- it felt like being on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at cruising altitude. But the flight continued on its way and completed an uneventful remainder of the 45 minute journey, culminating in a smooth, feathery landing in Spokane. I was never so happy to see that ugly old airport. Words wouldn't even begin to describe it. So I’ll put it insipidly: I wanted to get out and kiss the ground. Once back in the terminal, though, I decided, no mas.

'That’s enough. That’s it. I’m done. From now on, I'll get there in a car, train or bus, or I won't get there at all.

And I haven't been on a commercial jet since. It’s kind of silly, though. The likelihood of dying in an airplane crash is extremely small, and except for the anomaly of 9/11, there haven't been many domestic plane tragedies or incidents for at least a quarter century. And there is that faith in God thing I've supposedly invested my entire eternity in. So what's the deal? Why am I such a coward?

If I knew the answer to that, maybe I'd have grown up to be a pilot rather than just an earth-bound radio dude. But Mom always said I used to spend an awful lot of time with my head in the clouds too. So maybe being a white-knuckle flyer is just my little way of being obstinate again. 

Oh well.  Happy landings!