Fear in the sky

I’m finally back from my trip to California where I enjoyed the sun, and sunburns, of the beaches in Southern California. I also enjoyed the, mostly, crystal clear waters of Lake Tahoe, as well as the ups and downs of the new Tower of Terror ride at Disneyland.

But I want to talk about my flight back. I should preface this story by sharing the fact that I hate flying. I’m not paralyzed in fear, but I just don’t like it. It makes me somewhat uncomfortable. I’m one of those who think that if we were meant to fly, we’d have wings. I fly somewhat regularly, sometimes 2-4 flights every month, but I am never thrilled about being that high up. Like Ellen once said, I think they are just showing off “look how high we can go!” Couldn’t they just go high enough to miss people and cows?

So anyway, I had a very uneventful flight from San Diego to Phoenix. I was just now a couple hours away from home, just one more flight, from Phoenix to Wichita. We board the plane on time, we pull back from the gate on time, we are number 1 for departure, everything is ready.

So there we are, speeding up on the runway. Going faster and faster by the second. We were getting ready for physics (or magic) to do its thing and lift the tube of steel with wings up into the sky. And just as it was about to happen, all the engines came to a stop as the pilot aborted the take off.

Did I mention that our pilot was the spitting image of Jeff Foxworthy? Yes, redneck Foxworthy was freaking flying our plane and then aborted the take off.

We drive to a gate where they make us wait in the plane for about 40 minutes before deciding that they will let us get off the plane. We waited in the terminal for over an hour while we are told that they don’t know what happened or if or when we’ll get to leave.

Finally, over 2 hours after our departure time, we are let back on the plane. It was then when Mr. Foxworthy tells us that one of the generators on the plane had gone out during take off but that “luckily we only really need 2 of the 3 so let’s give it a try again and see if this thing lets us take off.” Those were his words, not mine.

The take off took longer than normal, at least in my scared little mind. My brain then engaged all my self-defense systems and allowed me to sleep like a baby through the whole flight only to wake up as we were getting ready to land.

Thankfully we landed in Kansas with no incident. So if there is a moral to this story is to not let comedians fly your plane.

Posted by david at 8:47 am | Permalink |

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