Emergency Landing

From the news...

"An Air Canada flight out of Trudeau Airport was forced to return because of a problem with the landing gear hydraulics. Flight 155 to Calgary took off Sunday evening. About forty minutes in to the flight, the pilots discovered the hydraulics problem and decided to turn the plane around and return to the airport. The hydraulics problem meant braking and steering would be an issue once the plane touched down. It made a heavy landing and a hard stop resulting in the gear catching fire. Emergency crews, already having been called in, were quick to extinguish the flames. All 121 passengers and five crew were evacuated from the aircraft without incident or injury. An investigation is underway".

I had a rather harrowing experience on Sunday night.

My flight from Montreal to Calgary had just taken off and the pilot had just turned the seatbelt sign off when a terrible grinding sound started on the left side of the plane. The plane had already been delayed an hour due to problems with the navigational systems, so I was already vaguely nervous about the flight.

The flight attendents seemed to be ignoring the noise, so I assumed the pilots were moving flaps or something, despite the fact that the plane was flying very steadily. The noise stopped, then started again a few minutes later. It was a harsh griding sound and everyone was looking around at everyone else. Someone asked the flight attendant what the noise was, and she said "it's a hydraulic problem that the captain is aware of, and they are testing the systems". My heart sank, but I didn't get too nervous since the flight attendants were starting to wheel out their carts and had closed the curtain to business class. The noise started and stopped a couple of times and we continued flying normally.

Some people put their chairs back and closed their eyes or were starting to open their books, etc. Since I was in an aisle seat, I was watching the flight attendants start serving drinks, when suddenly they were speaking in hushed tones and then the two attendants wheeled their carts quickly to the back of the plane. Another attendant re-opened the curtain to business class and then wheeled her cart up front to stow it.

I nudged the guy next to me, a young lawyer from Calgary with whom I'd been chatting, and said "something's wrong". The guy next to us opened his eyes and looked at me with panic. Then the pilot came on and announced they were having problems with the plane's "hydraulic systems" and that we'd be making an immediate emergency landing back in Montreal.

Then panic started. Flight attendants were running everywhere and they started announcing instructions to the cabin "Flight crew prepare for Level 6" followed by a sequence of tasks, then "Flight crew prepare for Level 7" and so on (I kept thinking as they got to Level 9 - what is Level 9 - a crash landing?).

They prepared us for a crash landing, trained us on the emergency exits, showed us how to brace for landing (two options!), how to hold babies. They moved people from emergency rows and replaced them with others. A woman was crying. People were holding hands. The flight crew was visibly shaken as they took us through a review of the emergency card, the exits, procedures for evacuation, etc. They told us to remove eyeglasses and high heels in preparation for landing. It was surreal. The full catastrophe.

All of this took about 45 minutes, as the pilot circled the Montreal airport. We speculated that he was dumping fuel, and allowing time for the emergency ground crews (ambulance and fire) to get into place. The plane was flying normally, except that occasionally it would make a jerky movement, as though the flaps would not cooperate or something. He seemed to have trouble banking, as he banked first one way and then the other towards the city. Then we started our descent very quickly and people got nervous and looked at each other wide-eyed. The plane was dropping quickly, and it felt like it was hurtling forward much too fast. There were no other announcements from the flight deck. This worried me a little since it meant the pilots were busy.

As we approached the runway, it looked like Iraq outside the window. Rows of emergency vehicles were lined up and there were red lights flashing everywhere. We could see them as we approached, two lines far back from the runway. That was scary, seeing those red lights in the night. And the plane was landing very fast. There were no announcements from the cockpit at all. Then we hit the runway fast and hard, at about 190 knots (70% faster than normal speed, the captain later told us). We were all thrown forward as they hit the brakes and put on the backwards thrusters and wheel brakes and whatnot the second we landed. It took the plane so long to get stopped that I thought we'd drive off the end of the runway! It was just black outside and the runway wasn't even lit up at this point. I don't know if we went beyond the lights, or what.

As soon as the plane stopped, it seemed like firetrucks were outside the windows immediately. They sprayed white foam onto the plane which started running down the windows. The pilot announced that the landing gear was on fire but that ground crews were putting it out. We were all so happy to be alive, but I kept thinking about the plane being full of fuel and hot metal and that that was a very bad combination! Great. Let me out before we explode!

To make a long story short, we were evacuated after sitting in the plane for an hour. The pilot walked back the aisle (to a great round of applause) and everyone asked him questions. He said that two out of three hydraulic systems on the plane had leaked and that the third system was not fully operational. They landed manually and were at risk of not having landing gear, and also having problems with the flaps, which is why they landed so fast. He said they had not dumped fuel. He said that the problem was very rare, but that he had just trained for this emergency six months ago, on their training simulator. Besides being cool as a cucumber, he looked like one of those pilot models from a GQ ad, so it was like watching a movie, seeing this handsomely-uniformed young hero cruise up the aisles to the praise of the gushing crowds!

Was I glad to be alive!

The whole 45 or so minutes from the time the emergency was declared until we landed was surreal. At the moment they make the announcement and you suddenly realize what's happening, it is pure disbelief. This is your worst nightmare. I can remember thinking "no way, this is NOT happening" as soon as they made the announcement, turned on all the lights, started running around. It went from normal to dead serious in 5 seconds. People's eyes were as round as saucers.

I thought about dying. I felt afraid. But I was mostly calm. It seemed like the pilot still had control of the plane, at least until they started descending so fast. I was calm until then. I kept telling the guy next to me "it will be okay." He was terrified and kept trying to phone his wife. He kept saying "oh god" over and over.

Some people appeared really afraid, and other people seemed totally stoic. I can't tell you everything that went through my head. So many things. So many emotions. Disbelief. You can't believe this is happening. You are sitting there alive and well, preparing to crash. You can't get your head around it, that there is real danger. At least the plane wasn't lurching or out of control. That enabled me to stay calm, I think, made me think it would be okay.

I thought about my Mom a lot, and was so happy I'd just spent a week with her (under rather stressful circumstances - an entire week spent at hospital attending to my Dad who is going into a wheelchair, showing signs or dementia, losing control of his body, and may need to go into a nursing home...). Happy I had seen my Dad and Grandma and aunts that I love. Mostly though, I thought about my Mom. I felt tremendously sad thinking about if I die, and when she gets the news, what that would be like. I felt worse for her than me. I thought about David and my cat. And then I even thought about my blog readers, and how it will suck because they will never know what happened to me and that there might not be another post. That I really should give David my password and userID.

You think about people most of all. And then you think about how hard you are on yourself everyday, for so many reasons, and suddenly realize how precious you are. You just suddenly have all this LOVE for yourself, all this thanks for your life. I didn't feel any regret. I just remember thinking that worrying about my weight is stupid. All the time I spend beating myself up for being a few pounds more than I should be is utter nonsense. That worrying about a job, a house, all that material stuff is really irrelevant. I remember thinking that I was glad I was wearing my rose-coloured Lululemon yoga jacket because I really like it, and it is good to die wearing something you like. Then I remember thinking that if there was a fire, my nylon jacket would burn very quickly. This upset me.

I put my cell phone in the pocket. Then I took it out. I didn't want the antenna jabbing into me and stabbing me if we crashed. I put it back in my bag. I put Kleenex in my pockets, in case we crashed and I had glass in my eyes or debris and needed to get it off my face or out of my eyes. Crazy.

Then you think about people. My Mom. David. He would get the house and that made me happy, that our mortgage insurance would pay it off and he could quit his job and be a fireman maybe. That Mom would get 4x my salary in life insurance and another 2x for accidental death, and that she could retire on 6x my salary. My friend Margaret...I hoped she would look through my papers and throw out all the crap and keep the good stuff. My cat. Silly I know, but will David send him to live with my Mom? You don't think about the people at work, I'm afraid.

I remember thinking about how much time I had spent thinking about home decor, and it seemed really funny. I felt suddenly not that it was stupid, but that it had been important to me, and that I respected that, that I wanted a beautiful home and that I was proud to have pursued creating a beautiful world, but that at that point, I would settle for a really tacky house just to be alive. Suddenly all my un-perfect and even the ugly rooms seemed perfect. I thought about my living room and how I have been struggling with the colour. And it suddenly seemed utterly stupid to waste time pondering that. Clearly TAUPE was the answer. I actually thought that...that life is too short to think too long and too hard about these things - taupe was the colour I needed to paint that room!!! It would pull everything together, and it would be DONE and I could go on living my life!!!

Crazy. I keep having flashbacks. I keep feeling sad, and then I feel happy to be alive. And then I feel like I should be really changed. And I am. But I just can't put it into words yet, I'm afraid. I thought about goodness. The one overlying thought I had as I considered whether or noto I would die --- was that I had been GOOD to people. I had lead the best life I knew how. I could probably have done more, but I had been a very good daughter and girlfriend and friend. I felt proud of myself. I felt like I can go now and it will be okay. Because people are what had mattered, and I had been a good person to other people.

That's a pretty profound epiphany. People are what matter. Relationships. I also felt like I had been true to myself. I have been honest and frank and open and even though I hate my job, I felt like I had lived a pretty authentic life. Authenticity is what matters too.

Authenticity. Integrity. Goodness. These are what matter.

I am at work now. I can't concentrate anyway, so I wrote this blog. This weekend we are going to the country to celebrate David's birthday with his Mom. Then next week he and I are travelling to Vancouver Island for a week in Tofino and a few days with friends and family in Victoria. I am eager to see the ocean. To be able to sit back and reflect on what happened to me, and what I am going to do with the rest of my life, and how can I frame this for myself, you know. Where do I put this in my brain...

And maybe eventually I will come back to talk about paint and beautiful houses and furniture. All those things are important too because they make your heart sing, and it is authentic and respectful to yourself to create a beautiful world for yourself and your family. Creating a lovely home is a gift you give yourself. But even so, right now it just doesn't seem very critical to me to get it all right, all right now. I think I also realized that it is important, but it will take less of my time because I will follow my heart more, stop trying to get it all perfect, and stop wanting what I don't have and moreover, don't really need. All will be well if I just let go of perfection.