I took a quick business trip to Phoenix and the way back was a bit exciting. And not the kind of excitement that I like. I flew from PHX to Las Vegas, where I was to connect home to Raleigh. Am connecting to Raleigh I should say, because I am actually posting this from the air. There is WiFi on the flight from Las Vegas to Raleigh. So I have given away the punch line of this story: I live.
The pilot came on near the end of the flight from Phoenix, at about 10,000 feet, to tell us the approach and landing in Las Vegas would be bumpy. OK, no biggie, that happens all the time, <insert jersey girl here> whatevah. As we got closer though, it became rapidly obvious that to even this exceptionally experienced and blasé flyer that he was not kidding about bumpy. He came on again and said that winds were nearing 40 mph, and to be sure to fasten our seatbelts tightly. I cinched up my belt.
Down, down, down we went, and the plane lurched and skated, skittered side to side with truly frightening moves. The wings were dipping up and down wildly, tilting us up and down 45 degrees at least each direction and then flopping us 45 degrees the other direction - all the way, doing that skating on ice sort of thing were it feels like the plane is sliding, which is from cross winds. The luggage bins started popping open and bags fell out. My backpack and other people's things dislodged from under our seats and slid all over the place. I kept hoping and hoping and hoping and HOPING that we would swing around and try a different approach or return to Phoenix or go ANYWHERE but windy Las Vegas, but the plane continued to get lower and lower. This went on for a good 7-8 minutes. Trust me, this is a very long time. Try timing it and see how long it is and then imagine lurching like that for 7-8 minutes.
I was sitting in an exit row and realized 'holy crap, I may have to USE this exit door!'. As we got closer to the ground, the winds and turbulence only got worse, not better. When the runway was in sight, I was absolutely petrified. I was afraid for my life, and I am not kidding. I was literally afraid the plane was going to crash, and I had good reason to be scared. The wings were still tilting at alarming angles and I (and pretty much everyone else) was afraid one would slam into the ground before the wheels would hit the ground. The flight attendant came on and said "Hold on everybody!". I have never heard that from a fight attendant in all of my years of flying.
I braced myself, staring out the window at the wings, hoping and hoping and hoping that they wouldn't hit the runway when BANG, we slammed into the runway like an elephant onto a china cup, which of course caused even more bags to fall out and scatter. But we were down, safe, and I could have kissed the ground. The flight attendant got on again and said "We're all still here!". And I absolutely have never heard anything remotely like
that from a flight attendant. Navigating all of the bins and bags was interesting, trying to match bags to people as we tried to exit. People were holding up bags and hollering "whose bag is this?" but we all managed to get our bags and luckily, no one was hit on the head by a falling bag.
As it turns out, the winds were exactly 1 mph lower than the limit for closing the airport, so I did have good reason to fear for my life. They did close the airport for 50 minutes shortly after our flight because the Raleigh flight was delayed on takeoff. Trust me, that was one delay I was MORE than happy to tolerate.
Now let's hope for no wind in Raleigh, eh?
