'we have to land'

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The previous evening, on September 10th, Id left Copacabana beach tanned and relaxed on the way to Rio's international airport. A fire in the linha vermilha (red line) had caused part of the freeway to collapse and the journey took 2.5 hours instead of the 30 minutes it normally took. The deserted freeway leading up to the collapse was covered with kids from the favelas playing soccer and listening to samba music, while smoke still curled from the gaping hole that was surrounded by fire engines. When I got to the airport, I found my reservation with United Airlines had been cancelled due to a mistake on my part (Id arrived at JFK one day late for my flight to Buenos Aires and the whole ticket had been cancelled) As the fire had delayed my trip to the airport, Id missed the Rio JFK flight and the Newark to San Francisco connection that was almost booked for me when I made my initial reservation in July; little did I know that flight would be hijacked with 3 others and eventually crash into a field in Pennsylvania.

I was given a standby ticket for the flight to Miami, and a connection to San Francisco. Nervously I waited in the transit area and eventually got a confirmed boarding pass. I got onto the 767-300 to find it almost completely packed, Id narrowly missed this plane! I sat down and the flight soon shut its doors, taxied to the runway and took off over rio..... the last thing I saw, before it was swallowed by clouds, was the lit up Cristo Redentor statue.

During the 9 hour overnight flight, I was unable to sleep, and the man seated next to me had a huge jacket and carry on luggage stacked on his lap, he sat there bolt upright for the entire flight banging the tv screen every few seconds when it flickered. Lightning flashed beneath us as we cruised over the Amazon basin. I watched the movies and prepared for the shock of arriving in miami at 4.15 am.

Customs formalities were minimal when I did eventually get to Miami. Three hours later I was waiting for another 767, also United, and sat in the huge waiting area that used to be the Pan Am terminal. The plane left on time, at 7.40, and we taxied in the dawn light to the runway and took off over the skyscrapers of Miami, and cruised over the Caribbean sea as the sun poked its head through the clouds. I had abandonned my seat for one next to the back, the plane was empty and the crew quickly fed us and we sank into the inflight videos. I was watching the Discovery Channel's EARTHQUAKE IN NEW YORK which described the destruction to the city's skyscrapers in a 7.0 quake.....

The next thing I know the nose is pointing down and the airbrakes are up, the airframe begins shaking and vibrating. Passengers in the front rows begin to stand up and look around, bewildered. The airshow map was turned off, and then the plane veered off to the left sharply, descending faster and faster......the cabin crew suddenly appeared shouting, 'Seatbacks up! Prepare for emergency landing! Seatbacks up!' People complied and the planes nose kept dropping faster and faster; then the screams began. Brazillian passengers who were not able to understand the commands began yelling and shouting in the front of the plane..... I sat back in my seat, trying to figure out what was wrong: were we crashing? The engines sounded fine. Were we missing part of the wing? The plane acted intact. Then I thought it might be a technological problem, that might be too serious to inform us. Then the airshow map came on, and it showed our destination: Oklahoma City.

The earth flew up to us as we dropped like an elevator and people kept screaming; a woman across the aisle was chewing on her arm, drawing blood in the panic. I looked down the aisles and people were holding hands, praying, and still screaming. 5 minutes before Id been calmy sitting in a plane, faithfully believing everything was ok. But now, clearly something was terribly wrong; I though of Sioux City, Iowa, and the DC-10 that cartwheeled that day in 1989...... could that be us? I grabbed the arm of a female fight attendant, as she passed byl and asked her, 'Can we get an explanation?' She looked at me with tears in her eyes, and said, 'We have to land.'

The runway was in sight and the shadow of our plane followed us as we neared the ground; all I wanted was the wheels to touch and to get off the place safely..... we touched down so hard the overhead bins opened and dumped luggage out. People were shouting and the crew stood up and yelled at us to get our bags and get off the plane. Trucks pulled up and we jumped off the plane as fast as we could. There were 10 planes stacked up behind us and within 5 minutes all were on the ground.

At that point we were told that all commercial planes were told to land and that there had been a terrorist attack in NY, and a plane had been blown up. They said this as if it was a joke, and when we got inside all we saw were frozen people watching the news of the building collapsing. Oh my god. That could have been us.

Within half an hour we were evacuated to an area hotel where we waited for three days with the 500 other stranded passengers. We were told nothing and the wait was filled by hours of CNN and frantic calls home and news from the airline staff in the hotel, who knew as little as we did. We visited the bombing site in Oklahoma the day after the attack and it was peaceful and healing, and met with people who had survived the blast. They knew how America was feeling.

Three days later our plane took off, we waited at the airport for 5 hours but were glad to be on our way. Everything we take for granted, the pilots and flight crew arriving at the gate, the gate being opened, the plane being cleaned, was met with applause from the passengers. we were carefully searched (twice through a walk in xray, once with a wand and one body search) some had their shoes put through the xrays, others had to expose everything on the table for inspection. We took off in darkness and cruised over the west towards SF, and when we touched down everyone applauded. the airport was empty, and the terminals were darkened.

What happened when we pulled into the gate was amazing, and Ill never forget it: the ground staff were waving and cheering American flags to us as they stood on the equipment, it was like returning to the states after a war, or the Olympics. The same thing happened when the ground staff cheered us when we walked into the deserted terminal, and that made alot of people cry.

When my two bags popped out of the conveyor belt, and I got home I felt like Id been released from some terrible monster. Id never been so happy to not have to get on a plane again.