My First Redeye Flight or How to Almost Get Into a Plane Crash

Hello again to those of you caring enough, or related to me enough, to come by and read another rousing short story about this or that random experience I’ve had at some point in my life. As the name implies, this one contains some mild elements that may be bothersome to anyone who has experienced, or knows someone who has experienced, some type of air travel related incident. So, there’s your warning I suppose, now on with the story.

Have you read my story about clubbing? If not you should, though it is not required to understand this story. This story is however a sort of continuation of that story, because it is what happened to the group I was with when we went to leave that conference in Las Vegas.

We were scheduled to fly out of Vegas at around 8:30am or so. We arrived early of course (though this being pre 9/11 we didn’t have all that hard a time getting through security) and proceeded to our gate. If you’ve never been there, the Las Vegas airport has slot machines in it (I’m not sure to what extent they still exist in this day and age, but I know they’re still somewhere around) so as we sat and waited for our plane to board, some of the guys tried their luck at the slots a few more times. I think someone won $10 which was cool.

At just after 8 they announce that they are about to start boarding our flight. As is the tendency with air travel, everyone stands up and heads for the line, regardless of what order they are actually going to be boarding the plane in. Our group was kind of towards the back.

Suddenly, our boss who had brought all of us out, just starts running away back towards the terminal. All of us stood there stunned, until other people in line ahead of us also turned around and started running. So we joined the throng until we arrived back at the airlines main customer service area. Our boss was at the front of a growing line of frantic travelers.

We would discover in time that our flight at been cancelled right as they were about to start boarding. The airline called it a mechanical problem, which I am in no position to challenge. What the problem was, I’ll never know. Another thing I’ll never quite understand is how our boss realized the situation, a full 20 to 30 seconds before everyone else in line. He claimed that he had read the ticketing agents lips, which seems like an odd skill to have suddenly acquired, but okay.

His jump on the the other travelers had been to our advantage, at least somewhat. As our group was fairly large, we had driven to our home airport (Philadelphia, PA) in two different vehicles. As luck would have it, the airline had 2 tickets leaving on a flight in about an hour. Which our boss secured for himself and the other driver. That left the other 5 of us. This is where things got a bit more, difficult.

The airline had no other flights out of Vegas until the following day. They were however able to transfer our tickets to a different airline (again something almost unheard of nowadays) which had a flight going out at around 1:30pm local time. This meant we would arrive in Philly around 11:30 at night, but it was a small price to pay to be able to sleep in our beds that night. Many of the other travelers ended up stranded in Vegas.

Our tickets were transferred, and although I was one of the younger members of the group, I was put in charge of the leftovers as we called ourselves. This was mostly due to me having a cell phone, albeit a primitive one.

We spent our long hours waiting by playing a few more slots, and then eating a rather nice lunch at some sit down restaurant within the terminal, on the bosses dime of course. Our time having been served, we lined up for the second time that day to board our plane. This time no troubles, we boarded, taxied, and soon we were off. We would fly first to Denver, then after a two hour layover head for Philly.

Now at this point in my life, I had been on a number of planes, and I pretty much felt like I knew the drill. We were located at the very back of the plane, I was in a single seat in fact right next to the bathroom entrance. I assume this had to do with us being added at the last minute, but I don’t actually know. Things went well until we were about 30 minutes from landing.

Our first ‘warning’ if you will had to do with the pilot announcing that we were preparing to start our decent. He kind of did it hastily, and threw in at the end that there were some storms in the area so things might be a bit bumpy. The bumps began manifesting almost immediately. They weren’t anything crazy though, I’d been in turbulence far worse then this was. Then all of a sudden we hit a BIG drop. I’m told this has to do with downward winds that can happen around thunderstorms, but I’m not an expert, if you want to expound on planes quickly dropping in altitude sign up as a member on my site and leave a comment (see what I did there).

The next few minutes were a bit of a blur. The attendants made their usual sweep through the cabin to pick up any remaining trash and such. Then the pilot came over the speakers telling us that we should be landing shortly but that we should expect some shaking as there was a storm approaching the airport. The mood of the cabin had changed by this point. You could see people looking around a bit nervously, and some had closed their windows. It was a this time that we hit another very bad burst of turbulence, and the plane made another big drop. This elicited a reaction from many of the passengers.

Most of the attendants were still hurrying about with duties like securing hatches and making sure people had their tray tables up. Suddenly the pilot came back over the speakers and with a message that was neither calming in tone of message. He basically yelled “Flight attendants return to your seats immediately!” It is here readers that I experienced something I had never seen before, nor have I ever seen since.

My lone seat at the back of the plane sat close by to a pair of seats occupied by two stewardesses. As they sat down I saw actual fear in both of their eyes. The plane shook violently and the entire cabin broke into nervous chatter and, very audibly, prayers. I looked out the window and a few things became evident quickly. Firstly, we were flying extremely fast. Secondly we were much lower to the ground than I was used to seeing during an approach.

As the plane continued to shake more and more, I was shocked to see the start of the runway suddenly appear below us, much farther below us than I had ever seen during a landing before. I had just enough time to look out the other side of the plane. What I saw shocked me.

If you’ve ever flown into the Denver Airport, after a certain year I guess, you may know that it looks like several teepees lined up together. I could just make out the tops of a few of those teepees, the rest of the terminal was enveloped in an impenetrable sheet of rain. Lightning was flashing all around it. The plane suddenly bucked and then turned hard as it began to ascend. The runway fell away below us, as the flashes of lightning cast crazy shadows throughout the cabin. There was screaming within the plane as we pitched and shook violently, the wing on my side dipping heavily at one point causing one of the overhead compartments to fly open spilling duffle bags into the aisle.

Not to be dramatic, but at some point as I had seen the runway suddenly start to race past too quickly, and too far away, I had internally made peace within my heart that this might be the end. Based on the looks of those flight attendants, I think they had been wrestling with the same sort of thing. I’ve been through bad storms and turbulence since then, even been a bit scared by some of it. But this was hands down the most frightening flight I have ever been on.

After we had put some space between us and a now completely storm covered Denver Airport, the pilot again came over the speaker, sounding a bit more piloty. He informed us that we were being rerouted to Colorado Springs. Oh what fun. Nicely enough we landed comfortably about thirty minutes later.

Here comes another thing you won’t see in the post 9/11 world. Once we had landed they actually allowed us to de-board the plan. We entered the rather sparse (by comparison) Colorado Springs terminal. Of course many people had questions, and as I was the one with the tickets, and was at the very back of the plane. I was the last one to reach the customer service counter. After about an hour I got the low down. We were eventually going to be returned to the plane we had arrived on, and flown back to Denver. From there, as luck would have it, they could put us on another airline. A red eye flight. To Baltimore.

The alternative was that we could spend the night in the Denver Airport (they couldn’t arrange for more than two hotel rooms, and each room could only hold 2 persons, and we had a group of 5 so they wouldn’t even entertain the idea), and then fly back at 2pm the next day, arriving in Philly at like 8pm. I got on my cell phone and called the boss. The red eye to Baltimore (BWI) would leave at just after 1am from Denver, and land at just after 7am. He told me he would make sure someone was there to pick us up.

Now this isn’t quite as egregious as you might think. We all lived in Delaware, so the difference between BWI and Philly wasn’t really a factor. We exchanged our tickets, found the one open restaurant in the Colorado Springs terminal (it was a fast food burger place, though I don’t actually remember which one), ate some dinner and waited for them to call us back to the plane.

We returned to Denver at just after 10:30pm. I think we ate again, but otherwise we just went to our gate and sat. Without a hitch, we boarded the red eye flight and took off for Baltimore. In an incredible twist, our luggage actually arrived with us (funny side note, our boss and the other driver’s luggage had been sent to Seattle while they were flying to Philly and they had to wait several days to get it). We were also surprised to be driven home by a limo service that our boss had sent to retrieve us.

I know I threw a bunch of times, places and what nots at you there, but I appreciate those of you who stuck around until the end. All and all it was not only a crazy experience, it has also been one of my most memorable stories to tell over time. The pictures in my head of this trip are burned there forever. Especially the faces of those flight attendants. Obviously, I’m happy to have made it out the other end, so that I could share it here with you. Until next time, take care, and safe flying…