The Travel Diva

The mile-high club

A few years ago I flew in a twin-prop 16-seater plane when it got lost in bad weather and could not find the airport. For 40 minutes we flew around in a perplexed manner, occasionally dropping through the low clouds which I could not help noticing, we shared with many mountain tops. Eventually, the pilot got his bearings and put us on the runway with a decent so steep that I sometimes still sit upright in bed at 3 a.m. in recollection. I vowed then that I would never fly in another light air-craft. Then 2 years ago, I did just that - almost but not quite ahead the biggest tropical storm I ever hope to experience. I vowed then that really, absolutely and under no condition would I set foot in a light aircraft again.

Then, a few months ago, I find myself 400 km into bandit country in a charter single prop plane above a 3rd world country. It became evident our pilot could not see, putting his nose to the glass, looking for the tiniest bit of visibility. I could not understand why he did not put on the windscreen wiper. I then looked more closely and I glanced across at the other passenger. We shared a single telepathic thought. Actually two thoughts – there’s no windscreen wiper and we’re all going to die. It appeared that he could - out of the side window - get a very rough fix on our location, but only very rough. Twice he banked sharply, as if swerving out of the path of a big building. This was rapidly becoming worse than my worst nightmare. Then the rain came with wet bullets being shot at the windscreen. For one long minute we flew along a seemingly straight line, continuously descending. When we were some small distance above the ground, there was still nothing to be seen in front of us, I was comfortably certain we were going to die in the next few seconds and then bang (and I use this word advisedly of course), there it was, the runway rushing towards us at a ridiculously accelerated speed. The pilot tilted the plane and landed hard and slightly off centre and for a long frightening moment it seemed he could not keep control and that he would hit the grass and we would disintegrate into a million pieces. But he managed to hold it steady. After a small eternity we came to a stop just outside of a hanger. Then, I had the sudden and overwhelming urge to drink my body weight in alcohol. I am naming my first grandchild after that pilot.

And I can tell you this for certain now, however many years are left to me and wherever fate takes me, the only way I will ever be killed be a light aircraft is if one falls on me.

Labels: light aircraft, plane, single-prop, twin-prop

posted by Cindy-Lou Dale @ Tuesday, July 14, 2009