What a mid-air emergency in a small plane taught me about travel and life.
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here are certain phrases I never expected to hear a pilot say. Things like, “Uh oh” and, “What do you think I should do?” but that was before I dated a man with a pilot’s license.
Though more than a decade has passed since the incident, I still sometimes find myself with sweaty palms midflight: during a windy and aborted descent to Milos via Athens, Greece; amid a stomach-churning patch of turbulence before alighting in the Faroe Islands; or when experiencing the awe of rounding the Himalayas to a blind runway in Bhutan. In all of these moments, I returned to solid ground. Setting off on an adventure is never without its risks, a spectrum ranging from mild discomfort to mortal peril. That variety offers lots of lessons, like: what should a pilot do when his plane is faltering midflight?
First of all, don’t panic. Never, ever panic.
In my memory, the propeller plane has a yellowish tint, white plastic aged in the sun. Inside the Cessna were two brown leather seats and a small space in the back for cargo. The aircraft shared more in common with a kite than a jet. My then-boyfriend, a hobbyist pilot only in his mid-twenties, performed the preflight checklist while I waited in the gas-station-sized terminal of a private airport in Western Massachusetts.
He had taken me flying once before: an hour-long loop over the familiar territory of my hometown. On that flight, I discovered how an aerial perspective might become addicting to some. A meditative peace comes with the white-noise whir of the engine and the bird’s eye distance from the turmoil of the ground, though I never developed the same compulsion for flight.
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But I liked flying because it could take me to new places. So when my boyfriend suggested a day trip to Block Island, a tiny beach destination a few miles off the coast of Rhode Island, I agreed. We would leave in the morning, spend the day at the beach, and fly home before dark. To fly in a small plane to the beach–how chic! I had packed a tote bag with my things.
The first leg of the trip proceeded without incident, and soon we were settled on the shore. Cedar-shingled buildings and pristine landscaping framed the beach. The Atlantic shone a deep blue. My boyfriend ordered a cocktail for me at the beach bar, which my age, 19, precluded me from ordering myself. I remember worrying about my clothes–that I didn’t have the right look for a preppy New England locale. It was a regular day with indescript conversation. He talked about teaching drum lessons and living with a roommate, a sweet-natured rescue dog, and a futon in a run-down home converted to apartments.
My sharpest memories–of the day, and ultimately, of our our entire relationship–concerned our return flight. By the time of our return departure, I knew the rhythms of preflight review and takeoff, the glorious sensation of rising off the earth and into the sky ahead. We crossed the short distance between the island and the coast. Soon, we were gliding over Connecticut, green lawns and neatly fenced plots dotting the scenery below.
Our energy shifted as quickly as the gauges had dropped.
“That’s odd,” my boyfriend said. He pointed to the dash to indicate that the fuel level gauge for one gas tank had plummeted. There were two tanks, one on each side. He had filled them both before our flight. I looked out my window and nothing was amiss; our trail showed no signs of a leak.
Then the other gauge followed. The needle tipped down to zero while we looked behind again for signs of oil, finding none.
Our energy shifted as quickly as the gauges had dropped.
“Oh,” he said, looking at the dials. This time, I didn’t need him to explain. Each meter began to malfunction, as if the plane were shutting off. The nose of the Cessna remained eerily level as we continued to progress across the sky.
Each meter began to malfunction, as if the plane were shutting off.
“What do you think I should do?” he asked me. Then our headsets cut out. On the ground below, life continued as it normally would. People went about their lives: work and home and errands. If someone happened to look up at our aircraft, they would notice nothing unusual at all.
The propeller kept spinning for the time being. I wondered what would happen next. Would it grind to a halt, triggered by some disabled fuel connection? Would we plummet into a house or a yard? Would our deaths be prolonged or instantaneous? I knew from our earlier conversations about his training that in an emergency, a small plane can land on a golf course. I also knew we were approaching Hartford’s Bradley International airspace without a radio.
“I think we should land,” I shouted over the roar of the engine. My boyfriend studied a paper map, splotches of golf courses proliferating among the Connecticut towns. He pointed to a different icon instead: a private airport 15 minutes away. The seconds stretched by like rotten taffy between my molars. We navigated around Bradley without getting shot down, post-9/11 panic flashing in my mind. The controls still responded to his touch; the plane’s nose pointed in the right direction: forward. The radio, the dials, and the headsets remained off. Only a brief interlude separated me from the world to which I wished to belong. I was newly aware of how much could change in that short time and vertical distance.
I braced for impact.
Eventually, the runway of the private airport appeared. We entered a holding pattern to scan for other planes. Seeing none, we began our radio-less descent. The tarmac neared–too sloppily, too fast. I braced for impact. At the last instant, my boyfriend jerked the controls and we jilted up towards the sky, almost brushing the tops of the pine trees at the end of the runway. He circled for a second attempt. Again, I braced, my bloodstream churning with competing currents: my sense of danger with my adolescent invincibility. We might crash, I realized, the fear winning out; my boyfriend’s nerves threatening our odds of a smooth landing as much as the plane’s faltering systems. The airport seemed to rise towards us.
Then a miracle: the wheels touched down, no messier than any other landing in my life. Would the brakes work? They did–it was another relief to feel the plane slow and slow and–finally–to stop.
We disembarked. Never before had I so celebrated the feeling of my feet meeting the earth. I dry-heaved anyway. My boyfriend went to deal with whatever fallout awaited pilots landing without proper protocol. I stumbled over to some patch of grass, still queasy from the fear.
We would later learn that what we had experienced was only an electrical failure. Technically, we could’ve soared all the way back home. The danger existed only in our minds. I’ve come to learn that’s one of the worst kinds.
A few months later, the pilot and I would part ways for non-aircraft-related reasons. The very nature of an emergency landing suggested a crisis resolved and danger averted. Still, the knowledge that the systems and people depended upon for a safe return to Earth can fail has proven harder to shake. Things can go wrong, however unlikely that may be. Maybe I was a little afraid of flying after that, but my desire to see the world outweighed it; the way a new love erases heartbreak. In Bhutan, Greece, and Denmark, my rocky flights always delivered me to the world I sought.
Fear only exists in avoidance. The cure is to face it–another trip, another date–next time, on a commercial plane.