I haven’t been around the world, yet. It may never happen. It hasn’t been a specific dream, and if I ever did make it around the world, it would much more likely be in stages than in one fell swoop. I got to thinking about this as I contemplated crossing the Indian Ocean. It’s not that hard to do from here. Hong Kong, the nearest hub that sends daily fights to Johannesburg, is only four hours away.
The Indian Ocean is the one ocean I haven’t crossed. That got me to counting. I’ve crossed the Atlantic four times, and the Pacific seven (four of those times being the long north-south route between North America and Australia). To the best of my recollection, I’ve landed and taken off in an airplane 63 times.
They haven’t all been pleasant.
Flying in to Prosperine, Australia from Sydney once on a Virgin Blue flight, and the pilot hit the ground a bit too hard. The plane bounced. I guess while it was airborne again, he locked the brakes. When the wheels came down, the right rear landing gear hit first and the whole jet lurched to the right. Drastically. It hurt. The little old lady beside me turned to me and said, “well, we almost cartwheeled there, didn’t we?”
Flying from Barcelona, Spain to London, England last year on a very low budget carrier, when the plane makes a sharp right ascent. Looking out the leftside window, I can see another airliner fly under us. It seemed a safe distance away, but still our pilot had taken a maneouvre that I would consider harsh for passenger flights (The seatbelt light wasn’t on, as I remember, and people were bumped around. The girl beside me, who had told me that she was on her second flight and was terrified of dying, began praying).
Flying from Vancouver to Seoul was an adventure this last time. First, we were delayed departing because of some mess up by Air Canada. Then, once we finally got airborne, hours late, we had a medical emergency. They really do come on the PA and ask if there’s a doctor onboard. You could also hear a bunch of passengers groan when that announcement was made. Someone, I don’t remember who now, said that we were going to land in Alaska (the trans-Pacific route to Asia is over the top of the Pacific, not across the wide part). Finally, the Captain came on and told us that we were returning to Vancouver. Credit to the pilots, they did such a gentle turnaround that I wasn’t aware of it.
But the whole way in, the flight attendants were beefing about overtime and spoiled food and how could the flight possibly get out again that day. It turned out it couldn’t. By the time we landed, and the police led the medical team in (suspecting a drug problem maybe), it was past time that our pilots could fly. Air Canada put us up in hotels for the night, but the next morning, we were there at the appointed time, but the cabin crew (flight attendants) overslept and we left over an hour late from our third departure.
Flying from Toronto to Sydney on Air Canada, but this time they come out of it looking better. This, it turned out, was the day of the big black out in North America. I was boarding my plane when the power died. Fortunately, I wasn’t already aboard the aircraft, or I would have been stuck there for hours (anti-terror procedures dictate keeping checked people on the plane). But it took me hours to get back to my apartment (which had no food anyway). There were no bank machines working, and I had to get back to the airport the next day (still during the power failure) to be ready to board any plane that actually got out (my connection was in Vancouver). I made it. Air Canada loaded up the biggest jet they had with everyone they could fit (no assigned seating, just go get one, and the flight attendants held an impromptu meeting beside my seat to divvy up the sections.) There was no food, blankets or anything else except coffee and Finding Nemo. But I made the connection to Sydney only 24 hours late, and my luggage (which was still in the hold of the jet we now weren’t taking) came two days later.
But my worst flight, to date and hopefully ever, was an Asiana flight from Seoul to Beijing. The flight is only supposed to take 90 minutes, but we were 90 minutes late backing away from the gate. The pilot had made many statements on the PA in Korean but only spoke once in English. As we’re backing up, he apologized and stated that he and the tower had had a disagreement about his schedule. You never win an argument with the tower, even I know that. OK, so we’re taking off when we’re supposed to be landing. No problem, it’s a short flight.
Then we get to Beijing. We’re nose down, landing gear sounded like it was all down and locked (that thunk you get used to hearing and not panicking about) and from my window seat I could see that the flaps were fully extended. So, I think we were on final approach. Suddenly, the engines rev really high, the nose comes up sharply and we make a steep bank to the right. The only reason I can imagine a pilot doing it is to avoid a collision. The climb was so sharp that I wondered if we would lose lift and slide back to the ground tail-first. Now that was scary.
— SGP
