To the Sky

It was May 16, 2011, and I was about to pilot my first transoceanic flight. The drive to the airport was a combination of excitement and fear. Excited because I woke up this morning in one place and would be several thousand miles away when I go to bed, fearful because of the ever-looming potential of disaster.

I boarded the plane and looked out the window at the tunnel-like structure through which the passengers were boarding and heard them chattering as they took their seats. I was piloting a 757 jet, so there were a fair number of people getting on. I was always more scared of larger flights because if we went down, we’d be taking more people with us. We pilots couldn’t dwell on that possibility, but we did have to recognize it.

Finally, all the passengers were onboard and I began to taxi. “This is your captain speaking; looks like we have decent weather for takeoff. Estimated arrival time in Paris should be around 7 pm GMT,” I said as we started to lift off. The familiar rush of adrenaline and excitement flowed into my brain as the plane lost contact with the earth and sped into the sky. In a few seconds, we were above the not so perilous clouds. I loved it when there were clouds to rise through because the view outside looked so heavenly.

Things went pretty flawlessly up until we reached the eastern seaboard. There was a gigantic storm, which I later learned had devastated entire towns. “That’s a pretty nasty storm,” said my copilot. “Do you think we should land soon to stay out of it?”

“I’ll run it by air traffic control.” I tuned in to the correct frequency and gave them the situation.

I heard a voice over the radio say, “There are no open runways in the vicinity because all of the flights that were going to take off have delayed their departures to avoid the storm.”

“What can we do?” said the copilot.

“Not much,” I replied. “No rivers around to ditch in, not many open meadows either…”

“We should tell the passengers,” said the copilot.

“And freak them out? No one else needs to know what is going on back here,” I said.

“We need to say something,” he replied.

“Fine,” I said testily. “This is your captain speaking, it looks like we might have a situation ahead of us, but there is no need to fear…”

“Dude, we have every need to fear, the freaking plane is going down if we don’t think of something fast…” said the copilot.

At that moment a lightning bolt flashed before us. It was visible from the cabin, and I could hear people freaking out. I knew that even if we were hit, it would just go through the nose of the plane and come out the back, not harming the passengers or crew, but it sure looked scary as hell.

“I want off this plane!” a woman screamed.

“You can’t just jump off in mid flight, you have to trust that the pilots will get us through,” said the lady next to her.

Suddenly air traffic control came on. “We found an open airport for you to land,” they said. Thank Heaven! I thought. “It is about 30 miles from your location to the north-northeast.”

I steered the plane to the left and towards the open airport, but there was a huge blast of wind coming from the north that kept blowing me off course. The more I tried to get through it, the stronger it became.

Finally, I could see the airport up ahead and started to lower the landing gear. Making a huge lunge through the blast of air I knew I had almost made it… but then the wind blew me off the runway and into the meadow beside it. Terrified and shaken, the passengers slowly got off, and I was left wondering, “Why, God? What was the point of that? Why couldn‘t we just have a normal landing?”

I saw an angel in my mind saying, “Look at that small backpack sitting on the runway.”

I looked and said, “What about it?”

“It’s a bomb. If you had landed there it would have blown up the plane. God could foresee that, and you couldn‘t, so who do you think should be in the cockpit?”

“Hey, wake up, we have to take off,” said the copilot.

I opened my eyes and came to the realization  that the whole thing had been a mental projection - a fantasy.

All the passengers were onboard and I began to taxi. “This is your captain speaking; looks like we have decent weather for takeoff…”