At FRA

It was an extremely turbulent flight, especially so as we gradually approached the proximity of Iceland. I looked into the darkness, and tried to spot signs of the insidious ash that had plagued the airways above the North Atlantic in recent months.

I don’t think I can remember another flight that was as bad as this pone, for there was at least two hours out of the six and a half that the seatbelt sign was lit. Over the intercom, a nervous sounding cabin attendant regularly reminded passengers to fasten their seatbelts and not to get up from their seats.

The shaking was so intense that a number of times the plane just ‘dropped’, causing that sickening sensation in the stomach. I looked outside, and it was as if I could see the wing tips flap up and down from the violent turbulence. Cold sweat seized my body as I clenched to the armrests and tried to divert my attention to a much younger Tom Cruise in “The Firm”. The engine groaned loudly in resistance, and I could hear muffled gasps echo around the cabin.

A girl in the aisle seat across from me was so frightened she burst out in tears. A member of the crew knelt down next to her and held her hand for a while in an effort to calm her down. In the dimmed cabin, I could see the fear on her face.

I remember on the many, many flights I took by my self as a boy, turbulence would always frighten me terribly. I had this irrational fear that the plane would shake so hard the engines would break off, and so send the entire plane tumbling earthward to a brutal death. Watching episodes of “Air Accident Investigation” on Discover did not help. Somehow, being in the middle of the ocean, with the dark, icy depths below, always accentuates that fear.

Now, a little more grown up, I know better. Turbulence is but wild streams of air currents that happen to cross the plane’s flight path. The plane shakes because the wild air currents that flow over and under the wings in pockets of turbulence are not smooth, causing the wings to flex and bend. But usually it will pass sooner or later. And modern planes can still keep on flying even if an engine (or two) is lost.

Most important of all, in the (unlikely) event of an accident, the Warsaw/Montreal safety net will break my fall…