Friday, May 14, 2010

Had an interesting thing happen while on my way to New York today. My flight from California to my layover in Utah was nice enough. Pleasant flight crew, and I got to catch up on some sleep, having only gotten an hour and a half before heading to the airport.

Ugh!

All in all, the time seemed to fly (ha!) on my way to Utah.

My layover went equally smooth. Got into our gate on time. Had a chance to go up to the Sky Club and catch up on some work before heading out to catch my connecting fight to New York.

Loading the plane took a bit longer than normal. For some reason, people seemed to be perplexed with the whole put-your-bag-in-the-overhead-compartment-and-sit-down-so-others-can-board concept. Anyhow, with some gentle prodding by the flight crew, all bags got stowed. The doors were closed, and our plane got hooked up to the vehicle that was to back it away from the terminal with a push bar. The massive truck’s engine started and we slowly began to back up.

So far so good.

Just about the time we were backed into the center of a runway intersection, the truck began to turn us. And that’s when it happened. There was an extra loud sudden boom from outside the front of the plane.

What the heck?! Haven’t experienced that before.

The entire plane shuddered and jolted. And then it seemed to make a sharp backwards turn of its own accord before stopping rather abruptly.

Passengers questioned what happened? Flight crewmembers looked towards the cockpit and out their windows on the doors. And I, sitting a little in front of one of the wings, looked out the window to witness said wind bouncing up and down like a teeter-totter, shaking the plane in the process.

Yeehaw!

It took a few moments for the captain to come on the PA. He told us, “Everything’s okay with the plane. The stress tow bar that connected us to the truck snapped, pushing our plane away from it with the force. But our plane’s fine.”

Hmmm….

I looked out the window again and saw a sight I’ve never witnessed before. There our plane sat, like a broken down car on the freeway during rush hour, blocking an assortment of other planes. Now, had I been in my car on the freeway when this happened, I would have been stressed. But, sitting on a plane with no control over the situation, I found myself intrigued with how things played out.

Trucks could be seen hustling to our plane. And the blocked planes began to make what seemed like random turns, though I’m sure they were orchestrated by the control tower. And let me tell you, when a plane’s at a dead standstill and then begins moving again, the process occurs in hyper slow motion. Like I said, it was really quite interesting to see things play out from my bird’s-eye view.

The other planes got redirected. The part of the stress tow bar still attached to our plane was removed, and we got under way to join the line of other planes to prepare to take off.

Quite interesting!

I’m currently writing this about five minutes outside of landing in New York. This flight’s been uneventful, though now we’re banking hard left and hitting turbulence, which is making keeping my fingers connected with the keyboard a challenge. But hey, it’s flying—never dull.