Flying Uncertainties

Flying- Small Moments of Uncertainty

I’m reasonably content to fly with Easyjet. On balance, one is given a friendly and efficient service on the plane. The EJ Airbuses land fairly gracefully – unlike the Ryanair Boeings, which, in my experience, thump down hard. Perhaps the notoriously disgruntled workforce are on a mission to wreck undercarriages (and now there are more sobering reasons to prefer Airbus to Boeing, for the time being).

Ryanair has abolished the useful backseat mesh pocket – an irritating economy for anyone wanting to stow water bottle, book, sandwich or tablet. The airline does not attempt to conceal its economic model –“We’ll shove you in, fly you out and shove you off, but all cheaply”. Easyjet, however, retains more vestiges of civility, apart the usually basic departure areas and shuffling boarding queues.

Flying is, these days, a fairly routine and very safe experience. Nonetheless, its risks are starkly zero-sum. If all goes well, then well. But if it goes badly – then, well..

On some of my recent flights there have been certain moments of, to put it mildly, reflexion; or, to put it less mildly, anxiety.

The first occasion was a flight into Malaga of monotonous calm- until the plane turned over the sea for its final descent. We flew low over the shore, brushed the coastal motorway and inspected the industrial lots under the rapidly descending flightpath – when, suddenly, just as one was anticipating the “clunk” of touchdown, the plane’s nose pulled up and the engines accelerated. For a brief few seconds, one’s reactions were suspended. Was this something uncontrolled, even disastrous?, was the instant thought, with mind and body not knowing which way to lurch. Then, a banking turn; and the grateful realisation that the plane was under control. A voice came on to say that the control tower had aborted the landing- the implication being that there was nothing wrong with ourplane..

We landed safely. I was told by one of the pilots at the exit that a helicopter had stalled on the runway as we had approached.

The next flight was equally uneventful – but the approach to Malaga did give rise to a frisson of unease. We landed from the north, which means descending over the numerous Andalusian mountains and hills. When one looks out of the window and sees that the plane is flying past and not over the terrain, a certain direct awareness arises of the great fragility of the plane. It would be very easy to fly into, rather than around, the mountains; and one recalls the German pilot that did exactly that a few years ago. Also one recalls the Gary Larson airplane cartoon about displaced mountain goats, though thankfully there were no cloudbanks.

The third flight, again on the approach to Malaga, produced yet a different challenge. There was a family – two parents and two young boys, about 6 and 3. They were allocated the sets of outer seats of row 17; I was supposed to be in the window seat of one side. However, the elder boy was already fidgeting at the window when I arrived, so I offered to take the aisle seat. Dad and son moved over, with gratitude..

The benevolent gesture, it turned out, put me in the firing line of a barely post-toddler. This child possessed an impressive talent for iterative screaming in pursuit of contradictory goals. He didn’t want to sit with his mother, so he screamed for daddy. In due course the older boy and he were swapped over, I obligingly making room. (I had offered to change seats with the screaming child, but his mother presciently said that this would make no difference to his behaviour.)

All was well for a brief while. Then the boy began screaming to be back with his mummy. In the meantime the plane’s descent had started, and we were supposed to be all strapped in and immobile.

The screams, however, grew more frantic. So, contrary to aviation rules, there was a swift unbuckling, including by middleman me, and another swapping of seats.

It didn’t end. The child, back with mummy, refused to be buckled into his seat (an attendant made the futile assertion to him that the plane couldn’t land until he was) and began again to scream for “daddy”. We were now beyond the point in the descent where it was on any view safe to make another swap; so the mother just clung onto the boy, who wrestled to get clear and shrieked for “daddy” to do ..what? It was not clear.

Landing is always a bit stressful. The child was not some baby crying because of ear pressure. He was truly in a state of desperation. This spoke, uncomfortably, to the latent fears we all have on a plane, but learn mostly to discount or suppress.

When we touched down, the boy still screamed for daddy. At length he was handed across. But the screaming went on, now with more focus: “Daddy, take me off”..”.

March 2019