Keep My Words

“Brace!  Brace!  Brace!…”

The front landing gear touched the ground and the plane began to shake.  We were still going so fast, and the temperature in the cabin of the plane was rising.

And then, we stopped.

I have never heard such sincere and grateful applause.  We had landed.  The plane had not split in half, and we were not spinning out of control.  We were alive.

My phone rang.  I looked at the caller ID.  It was my friend Allison’s boyfriend, Kip.  Allison and Devin were roommates, so she knew that we had missed our morning flight, gotten drunk, fought in the airport, and were taking a later flight.  About an hour after she told Kip this information, he was watching TV and the news broke showing live footage of a JFK bound flight about to attempt a very dangerous landing at LAX with a broken nose wheel.  He had been attempting to call me.

I answered the phone.  “Hello,” I said.  My voice was shaky.

“Are you and Devin on that plane?!” he asked frantically.

“Yes, yes we’re on the plane,” I told him.

“Holy shit!  I just knew you were on that flight!” he exclaimed.

“Kip, I’m not gonna lie, I cried like a little bitch,” I admitted.  He laughed.  “I should go.  I want to call my mom,” I said.

We hung up and I called her.  She answered quickly.  “Mom, I’m okay,” I blurted out.

“You were on that plane?  I can’t believe you were on that plane,” she said.

“I was but I’m okay.  I have to go.  I’ll call you back soon,” I assured her before ending the call.  We hung up.

Suddenly, I realized how hot the cabin of the plane really was.  It reminded me of opening the oven while food is cooking and having that initial blast of heat rise out and smack you in the face.  (Later, I would see the video of our landing and understand that it was so hot because the rubber on the front tire had worn down to the metal, creating sparks followed by a small fire below us.)

The flight crew opened the main cabin door.  “Everyone off the plane!” a flight attendant instructed.  There was intensity in the way she said it.  Passengers enthusiastically did as she instructed.

On my way up the aisle I spotted the carry on bag containing my mother’s and grandmother’s rings still underneath my original seat.  I grabbed it.

When I reached the exit, the flight crew was standing by the cockpit to bid the passengers farewell, just as they normally would.  But needless to say, it was different.  When the people deplaning flight 292 passed the pilot, we thanked him for saving our lives.

Emerging from the plane was surreal.  Stairs from the exit door led down to the tarmac.  Emergency crews hurried us into standing-room-only trucks while news vans and reporters captured every dramatic moment.

When we disembarked the vehicles, the Red Cross was waiting with vans of food.  Inside of the airport, we ended up in a private baggage claim area.  There were boxes of McDonald’s cheeseburgers.  “This is better than Katrina,” Devin commented.

We waited.  People representing JetBlue were extremely kind.  They stressed that we didn’t have to talk to reporters if we didn’t want to.  The told us that we would be refunded whatever we paid for flight 292, and we would also be given vouchers for free flights.  They assured us that once we got our luggage, JetBlue would arrange for us to get back to New York however we wanted – an immediate flight, a rental car, or a train.  They also offered hotel rooms and transportation to anyone not wanting to travel right away.

Devin and I decided to take the flight back to New York that night.  Our luggage took a few hours to find its way off of flight 292.  In the meantime, I talked to a reporter from The Washington Post (she practically mauled me on my way to the restroom), we waved hello to Sally, and Devin ate enough cheeseburgers to make himself sick.

The flight back didn’t leave until about 9 p.m.  JetBlue had a private plane fly back any passengers of flight 292 who chose to take it, which wasn’t many.  Aboard the plane, everyone had their own three-seat row.  Devin and I lied down on rows across from each other.

A JetBlue representative boarded the plane and addressed the passengers.  He reiterated that we would be refunded and receive free flight vouchers.  He told us that our current flight would be catered and include unlimited free movies and alcoholic beverages.  He said that there would be reporters waiting for us at JFK, and that we didn’t need to talk to them.  We were assured that JetBlue representatives would be awaiting our arrival to make sure that we received cab fare or money to pay for any parking fees incurred at the New York airport.  Basically, JetBlue was willing to give us anything that was in its power to give.

Flight attendants came through with pillows and blankets.  Devin and I both took three of each.  He slept while I took advantage of the movies and booze.  As I watched Mr. & Mrs. Smith on the headrest television, I remembered what I was watching on the same kind of screen just hours earlier.

“Would you like some more wine?” a flight attendant asked me.

I looked at my cup.  It was still half full.  “I’m not even done with-”

“That’s okay, take another.  Take two,” she said with a smile while handing me two little bottles of red wine.

Because of the time change, we didn’t land at JFK until about 7 a.m.  We got our luggage.

“Where do you live and how are you getting there?’ a JetBlue representative asked us.

“Brooklyn.  And I guess a cab?” Devin suggested.

The man handed Devin a wad of cash.  “Is that enough?” he questioned.  It was more than enough.

Forty minutes later, I walked in my front door.  It felt good to be home.

…

The end.  (Finally.)

Click here to read Part 1.
Click here to read Part 2.

“I’ve been wanting to write the story for a long time,” I told Rona.

“It was the first conversation we ever had!” Rona said.

“You’re right!  At the Blarney Cove.” I responded.  “It was just fate.  Not that I totally believe in fate.  But I was destined to be on that flight.”

…

I had booked Devin and myself on JetBlue flight 292 departing Burbank at 3:17 p.m. on September 21, 2005.  The guy I was dating at the time was in a band, and they had a gig in Manhattan that night.  When he found out that I wouldn’t be back in time for his show, he got upset.  To appease him, I paid $50 to change our reservations to the first flight leaving Burbank on September 21.

That morning, Devin and I were driving to return the rental car.  We were going to take the free shuttle provided by the rental car company to the Burbank Airport.  It was a little after 7:00 a.m.  I remember him asking me what time we arrive in New York, and then us doing some math.  “Well,” I was saying, “if you factor in the time change, then, wait, this can’t be right.  Oh fuck.”

Our flight was departing in 15 minutes.  There was no way we were going to make it.  I had never missed a flight before.  I called my mom.

“What do I do?” I asked her.

“You can either pay to get on the next flight, assuming there are seats, or you can get on stand-by for free and just wait for a flight to have room,” she advised me.

At the Burbank Airport, I found out that we could pay $100 each to get on a flight leaving around 11:00 a.m.  I called my mom again.

“Don’t do it,” she said.  “Save your money.  Just get on stand-by, something will open up.”

Now Devin and I just had to kill time.  Luckily, airports serve liquor at 8:00 a.m.  White Russians seemed like a good breakfast, so we drank.  There wasn’t room for us on the 11:00 a.m. flight, so we drank more.  We drank so much that we managed to get in a huge fight about the ease and efficiency of using prediction text.  The fight escalated.  Devin ran away.  I chased him outside where we quickly reconciled.  Then, while chain-smoking cigarettes, we made an amazing discovery: an abandoned airport wheelchair.  We were so drunk that it seemed only appropriate for Devin push me around in it.  He rolled me inside.

“I’m happy you and you friend made up,” someone called to Devin.  In my inebriated state, I couldn’t tell if the person was being sarcastic.

We heard our names being called over the intercom.  It was 3:00 p.m.  Flight 292 was leaving soon, and there was room for us on it.  The announcement repeated our names along with the gate number.

I did not get out of the wheelchair.  Devin pushed me (rather quickly) up to the security line.  A TSA agent approached us.  “Mam, are you capable of walking through security without your wheelchair?” she asked me kindly.  I was so intoxicated, it isn’t hard to believe that I looked like I needed the wheelchair.

Devin came to my rescue.  “Here, I’ll help her,” he said as he took my arm and walked me through the metal detector.

The TSA agent brought the wheelchair to the other side of security for me.  I sat back down.  We heard our names again over the intercom.  It was the last call.

Devin was running while pushing me in the wheelchair.  We ran into a man in a suit and he said something snippy to us.

Fortunately, the area around our gate wasn’t crowded.  I jumped out of the wheelchair while it was still moving.  We had made it to the gate in time.

On the plane, we took our seats next to Sally, a middle-aged lesbian with a masculine haircut wearing a polo shirt and khaki pants.  She sat by the window, I was in the middle, and Devin had the aisle seat.  I slowly started to pass out.

I awoke not long after takeoff to an announcement from the pilot.  He said that there was a problem with the landing gear.  The plan was to lower the plane in front of the control tower at the Long Beach Airport so officials could assess the damage.  I was still drunk and not worried.  Devin was unconcerned as well.  I began to thumb through a magazine while awaiting the next announcement from the pilot.  There was a photograph of a handicapped person in the periodical.  “That’s what you looked like when you boarded the plane,” Sally told me, supporting my theory that I was plastered enough to look disabled to the TSA agents.

The pilot was speaking again.  He explained that the front landing gear managed to turn 90 degrees before folding up into the airplane, only it failed to actually retract.  Basically, the wheel was useless.  It might as well have been nonexistent.

Passengers, including myself, started looking concerned.  It only intensified when the pilot said that we were going to circle Los Angeles International Airport for a few hours to burn off fuel before making an emergency landing.  He said they would attempt to land the plane using only the rear landing gear.  At the last possible moment, he would lower the nose of the plane.

“Alright, everyone to the seats in the back of the plane!” the flight attendant instructed.  “We want to get all of the weight in the rear of the plane!”

Everyone did as they were told.  Sally began passing overhead luggage back.  Devin and I were separated.  He ended up a few seats away from me, and my eyes started to water.  “I want to be by my friend,” I said aloud to anyone who would listen.  The man next to me understood.  If we’re going to die, I want to be by my friend.

“I’ll switch with him,” the man said.

I was still in the middle seat and Devin was on the aisle again.  There was a man by the window to my left.  He had turned on his cell phone along with many other passengers, hoping they might get a signal to call their loved ones.  Just in case.

“They’re burning off fuel because we’re going to catch on fire,” the man to my left said.

I heard people talking behind me.  “When he lowers the front of the plane, the broken wheel is going to snap the landing gear and the nose is going to crash into the runway and crack the plane open.”

A woman across the aisle from me was crying softly.

“No,” I heard someone else say.  “When the wheel touches down it’s going to cause the plane to spin out of control and it’s going to flip and explode.”

The flight attendants positioned themselves in the aisle and demonstrated how we should brace our bodies when it was time for landing.  “You can cross your arms with your hands on the top of the seat in front of you, and then put your head down…”  There were other positions to choose from, but I didn’t hear them.  I figured the first one was as good as any.

I envisioned the cabin filling will fire.  I thought about how much it might hurt and what it would sound like when we crashed.  I assumed there would be screaming.  I wondered what it was going to be like to die.

Everyone was seated, and we began circling LAX.

…

To be continued.

Click here to read Part 2.
Click here to read Part 3.