I have written before – more than once – of my experience on board an airplane that I believed was about to crash. Now comes information that compels me to visit it again, because it is new evidence of an odd thing that happened to me on that airplane.
The new information, now finding its way onto the blogs, is an account by Susan O’Donnell of her experience as a passenger on board U.S. Airways 1549, that ditched in the Hudson River on Jan. 15 after hitting birds on takeoff. But O’Donnell was no ordinary passenger. She is an American Airlines 767 pilot, based in New York, who, after completing her flight sequence, was hitching a ride – they call it “jump-seating” – on 1549 on her way home to South Carolina.
Her account is fascinating in its detail, which is detail only a pilot could provide. She made the presentation to the Allied Pilots Association, which is the pilots’ union for American Airlines, but I read it at a site called PlaneTalking. Here is the excerpt that applies to my experience. It begins shortly after O’Donnell felt thumps shake the aircraft, followed by “a bit of smoke and the stench of burning bird.”
She said: “The passengers were concerned but calm. I couldn't see any part of the aircraft out the window from my aisle seat. Although I didn't hear much that sounded encouraging from the engines, I expected we would have at least partial thrust with which to limp back to LGA. We rolled out of the turn, and I could tell we were not maintaining altitude. Then we heard the PA: ‘This is the Captain. Brace for impact.’
“Obviously we weren't returning to LGA, and I could see enough out the window to realize we'd be landing in the river. The flight attendants began shouting their ‘brace’ litanies and kept it up until touchdown. The descent seemed very controlled, and the sink rate reasonably low. I believed the impact would be violent but survivable, although I did consider the alternative. The passengers remained calm and almost completely quiet. As we approached the water, I braced by folding my arms against the seat back in front of me, then putting my head against my arms. There was a brief hard jolt, a rapid decel and we were stopped . . . .”
Now to go my experience of Nov. 28, 1958, over Big Spring, Texas. I was a member of the Abilene High School football team, flying to El Paso for a playoff game. We were on two planes, both chartered twin-engine DC-3s with 27 seats. About an hour out, without any sense of anything happening, or of time passing, I suddenly found myself glued, spread-eagled, to the ceiling of the aircraft. I could not move my arms or legs or even close my eyes, though I tried to. Directly below me was a window of the aircraft, and below that was the brown West Texas ground. I did not feel I was falling toward it, but that it was rising to meet me. My life passed before my eyes; I was only 15, so there wasn’t much on the reel, but I saw it all.
Again, without any sense of something happening or of time passing, I found myself on the floor of the aircraft. Another player was across me, and other materials, including a long, square stick, like a measuring stick, white with red and black markings. Since I was a nut for airplanes, I knew that this stick was used at the airport to dip into wing tanks to determine fuel levels. For a quick, reflexive second, I thought: this stick is supposed to be outside of the airplane. If it is, then I must be too, which means I must be dead.
But I wasn’t. We picked ourselves up and listened as our pilot, Charles L. Kageler, came on the intercom to explain we had almost been hit by a military jet trainer, taking off from Webb AFB outside Big Spring. Later he told reporters that to avoid the collision, he cut all power to both engines, stood the DC-3 on its left wingtip, and dropped like a rock for 1,000 feet. That was the g-force that glued me to the ceiling. Kageler also said he estimated the jet missed us by 25 feet.
We flew on to El Paso, played the game the next day, won, 45-0, and flew back without incident. But all on board that DC-3 had become members of a club. As a member, I knew three things: one, your life passes before your eyes; two, the ground comes up to get you; and three, there was no panic on that airplane at any time, no yells or screams, only silence throughout and a strange, complete calm.
Which is what O’Donnell described among the passengers on Flight 1549. After my 1958 experience, I formed the conviction that the brain, being a logical instrument, wants to place patterns on all the data it receives, but the data was coming too fast on Nov. 28, 1958, and Jan. 15. And probably on most of the other aircraft, that crash and kill people, which is why I am so interested in new evidence of my old conviction. It means all those people did not suffer the indignity of terror in those last seconds, and that has always been important to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment