A Road Warrior’s Story - Emergency Landing On A Foggy Night
After traveling for more than 8 years on a weekly basis, I finally took a break and settled in Colorado about a few months ago.
8 years! That’s almost 320 weeks of traveling and nearly 1600 nights of hotel stays! There were these frustrated moments, lonely nights, hilarious encounters, embarrassing experiences and not to mention the countless fine folks I bumped into during these hundreds of trips I took. I figured it is probably worth while to run a series of my biz travel stories to share a few laughs and a few thoughts with you guys. So here is the second story of the “Road Warrior” series. If you missed the first one, here is the link – who has the first class passenger’s look.
Emergency Landing On A Foggy Night
It was a very foggy night in New York. I was flying back home to the Westchester county airport in White Plains, New York. I flew into this little tiny airport so many times that I could easily recognize its shining single runway from a few thousand feet up on a clear night. But tonight, I couldn’t see anything. Based on my travel experiences, I knew the plane couldn’t land when there wasn’t enough ground visibility. So I went to sleep when the aircraft started to circle. I don’t remember how long we’ve circled but by the time I was awakened by the flight attendant, it was way passing my bedtime.
The pilot made the scariest announcement I have ever heard. Apparently, due to some kind of miss-communications, we were supposed to be diverted to another airport to land but that didn’t happen. We were instructed to circle until further notice… And now, we were out of fuel and we couldn’t go anywhere but to land right here through the thick fog. The pilot also explained that the minimum landing visibility for our type of aircraft was 0.5 mile, however, we only had 0.3 (yep, I still remember this number), which means we would attempt an emergency landing. The flight attendant quickly went through the emergency landing procedures as how we should sit, etc… I don’t remember all the other details anymore but I do remember the guy sitting right next to me asked for my hand and started praying. I didn’t believe in God at that time, but I did feel the comfort while holding another human being’s warm hand.
The fog suddenly disappeared and the hard concrete ground was right there in front of my eyes. Within a split second, our air craft slammed onto the ground like taking a free fall. The right wing near where I was sitting caught flame. I could see those flashing lights from the ambulances and fire trucks nearby when we were still rolling.
A few people probably broke their bones. But other than that, most of us were only slightly injured. I had a few bruises and lost a piece of skin on my forehead. Ironically, I didn’t picture death during the whole time. Yes, I remember that I was thinking about my mom, my dad, and the boy I wanted to marry, but I didn’t think about dropping dead. For some odd reasons, I knew in my heart that I was going to survive and walk out of this disaster. And I did.
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