Backfire. I am somewhat what I would like to refer to as, travel-deficient. It has only really been the last three years that I have travelled internationally. I now realise that I have been missing out quite a bit on what the world has to offer – not that I would say that the travel bug has taken hold of me, but the prospect of visiting a foreign land now seems to appeal to me more than before. My first couple of long-haul flights overseas were mixed. There was a fine balance between the excitement of setting foot on a different continent, but also a level of nervousness as you brace yourself for a 16 hour flight. Other than take-off and landing – the scenery remains pretty much the same throughout the flight – blue seas. The result is that when there is suddenly a change of colour on the space outside your window seat, you notice it. This is exactly what happened to a friend a couple of years ago. She had boarded a Cathay Pacific flight from Korea back to SA. Once she settled into her seat and made herself comfortable, the crew proceeded with the safety briefing, and before she knew it, they were in the air. Side road – no one really ever listens to the safety briefing anyway and even if you did, chances are that if you drop from the sky at 38 000 ft, the “Brace-position” is going to do very little to soften the blow. Be that as it may. After about an hour of being airborne and endless stares out the window into the distance, my friend was overwhelmed by the desire in trying to remember the details of her earlier safety briefing. As her eyes “planed” the horisons (no pun intended), her sight was distorted and blurred for a handful of seconds. Yup, the engine attached to the wing on which she sat, just spew out a fireball that size of a small residential suburb in a colour halfway between what was described as naartjie Energade and purple/blue candyfloss. The effect of any sleeping tablet is now void. So was the look on her face. Her first reaction was to establish whether the passengers close to her also saw the flaming carnival. Nope. That’s weird – maybe the sleeping tablets worked too well. But when she is approached by the petite Asian senior flight attendant she knew something was up: “Pardon me m’am, but did you perhaps notice anything untoward or unusual occurring at the location of the wing and the engine in the last couple of minutes?” Right now, my friend is trying really hard to not throw up in her shoe. She confirmed what she had just seen to the flight attendant. After explaining the colour of the “explosion” to the crew member, what should have happened was for the flight attendant to calm, re-assure and ease my friend that everything was going to be fine. Instead, she requested with the faintest whisper, that my friend rather not share this with other passengers and advise the crew if she sees any sparks, fire, smoke or additional explosions for the remainder of the flight. “OK, so not only did I just wet my pants, I also have a racing heart, pounding chest and throbbing throat – you now also want me to be wide-eyed-bushy-tailed-watchman for the rest of the flight?” One can appreciate our passengers’ current attitude towards her new task during the flight that lay ahead. She has however landed safely – and seems like she will be able to lead a perfectly normal life from here on. She has not been put off flying altogether, but admitted that for all future flights, she will request – possibly even pay for the middle seat of the middle row in the middle of the aircraft. Ignorance is bliss.
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 11:45:26 +0000
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