How I Cured My Fear of Flying - Part 1

I do not enjoy flying - never have, never will. Except for a couple of rare occasions, I've managed to avoid it for most of my life, opting to travel either by car or train if possible. Every so often there's no other reasonable alternative; such was the case with a recent trip I had to make to Texas.

In order to save money, I booked my flights on Southwest Airlines. The savings were significant enough that I was willing to accept the fact that there are no direct flights between my home on Long Island and my destination in Dallas. We had to make two stops in each direction; if you counted takeoffs and landings, the trip in each direction actually required 3 flights, which made me wonder whether the planes had to rest along the way... I decided to just suck it up and do it, figuring that the money saved would be worth the added terror of multiple ascents and descents.

Southwest has a reputation for being a very good airline, and with one notable exception that I will get into later, that was my experience. The trip to Dallas involved stops in Orlando and New Orleans; by the time we were leaving New Orleans, the takeoff (which I dreaded the most) was no longer bothering me, so this turned out to be a good thing.

The return trip a week later required a plane change in St Louis, a stop in Chicago, and then on home to Long Island. At least, that was the plan... We were delayed leaving Dallas due to weather, and arrived in St Louis about 45 minutes behind schedule. I rushed to get to the connecting flight, only to discover that it had also been delayed about an hour. No problem; I just found a seat, pulled out my Kindle, and did some more reading while we waited to board. The original delay stretched to another hour, and at one point I heard the rumble of thunder. Turning to look out the window, I saw that the previously sunny day had suddenly become grey and threatening. It started raining, then I heard and saw hailstones bouncing off the tarmac. I could hear sirens wailing in the near distance, and thought to myself, "This can't be good."

Eventually, someone from Southwest Operations got on the speaker to let us all know what was going on. There were 3 problems: 1) The sirens were sounding because lightning had been spotted nearby, so everyone had to leave the tarmac, 2) the hail, although it had stopped, was large enough that FAA regulations required that every plane be inspected before it could be boarded again, and 3) the pilot scheduled to take us to Chicago was currently inbound on another flight that was delayed indefinitely due to the weather. He thanked us for our patience, and assured us that everything would be resolved as quickly as possible.


That's when things started to really go bad...

Several minutes later, it was getting very dark outside - rain was falling harder, and the wind was starting to pick up. A general announcement came over the loudspeaker: Everyone move away from the windows immediately and move either towards the interior walls or into a stairway if possible. We were told that there was "severe weather" in the area; we found out later that a tornado had been spotted, although it never touched down. Just to add to the chaos and confusion, several of the exit doors had been opened by people trying to get to a stairway, so now the alarms on those doors were screaming.

To be continued...

Openings

Hi there...

If you're reading this, you're either friend, family, or totally lost... either way, you're welcome here. The whole point of this blog (for me, at least) is to give me an opportunity to vent a little bit - comment on current events, share my take on some funny news stories... and if it's a really slow news day, I might just make some stuff up...

This is not meant to be a serious literary effort or bleeding edge commentary - heck, there's about 5 gazillion blogs like that already. My mission is to make you think and make you laugh - nothing else. So with that in mind, let's begin...