Emergency Landing

Night flights are the best. Sure, you’re uncomfortable and groggy and it takes a lot of energy to put your shoes onto your bloated feet at 3am so that the flight attendant doesn’t chide you for spreading some unspeakable foot disease as you stagger your way to a bathroom. But! The upshot is that you are drugged, both by miraculous concoctions such as Tylenol PM as well as the hallucinogenic-like quality of changing time zones. Thus, you are far less susceptible to the games that turbulence plays on your normally serene psyche.

On a daytime flight, the brain operates at full throttle. Will I die today? Of course I’ll die. I’m on a steel plane packed with bad-karma laden jet fuel that is at the heart of half the world’s conflicts. I’m dangerously close to the limits of the troposphere, where air temps will spike as we get closer to the giant orb we call the sun. The plane’s controls are manned by humans just like me, addicted to multi-tasking and never completely in the moment. Not to mention the fact that I’m tragically in love with the man sitting next to me, the ultimate recipe for disaster. (They were so young, people will say).

But then: I recall that two small children boarded the plane - the best of all signs. Hey, are those triplets back there? Yes, but the triplets are cancelled out by the not so friendly, armrest hog sitting next to Casey. Definitely, the plane is going down. But haven’t countless scientific studies shown us that cars as far more dangerous than planes? Yes, but doesn’t the law of large numbers change the nature of this statistic? More flights, more rolls of the die? Shoot, “die”! Did I say that? We’re doomed! We’re doomed! We’re doomed!

So. When a smoke-like smell was released into the cabin of our Southwest Airlines plane to Los Angeles just one minute into take-off, I naturally assumed the worst. As the passengers immediately exchanged troubled looks at one another, the flight attendants quickly rendezvoused in the aisle of the plane, did a wing check, and alerted the captain, who promptly turned the plane around and headed for the emergency runway in Denver. No comfort was found when the emergency personnel who boarded the plane couldn’t find the source of the electrical smell. Even more disappointment followed because we didn’t get to use the plastic chutes to exit the plane and discover whether we have the mettle to leave our ipods behind in the face of disaster.

The upshot is that the experience enabled me to add a new hypothesis to my collection of irrational beliefs on fate and flying. Like this: Once you’re in an “emergency landing”, mild as it may be, chances are you’re covered for awhile. Right? Or do there still need to be babies on board?