The worst plane rides are the ones where they tell you that you won’t be landing in your planned destination.
We had just finished a long weekend in Copenhagen and were eager to return to the old, creaky wooden castle in the Netherlands, where we spent all our weekdays for those three months. Our castle away from home.
The low-cost Dutch airline was stuffed to the brim with people speaking languages I could not understand. It was so dark the windows looked as if they were painted coal black. And there was no chance of having a drink on that ride–it would soak your clothes in seconds.
The destination on our flight tickets said Eindhoven. That much I was sure. Until, of course, an announcement from the flight attendant made me frantically reach for my ticket to double-check.
“Ladies and gentlemen, due to the weather, we may have to make an unexpected landing at the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.”
At the time, I did my best to distract myself from the dips and bumps of the flight by reading. Also, I had to–it was my homework, and it was due the next day. I had thirteen pages left and was determined to ignore my nausea and fear of impending death in order to finish the book.
But this I couldn’t ignore.
According to the attendant, the fog was too thick to land in Eindhoven. But we had booked a taxi for Eindhoven. It would be waiting for us when we got there–or rather, when we were supposed to get there. Amsterdam is two hours away from Well, and that’s if we can find a ride when we land.
And we have a deadline to be back.
My friend told me she was going to try to contact our administrators at the castle to let them know we might be very, very late. The flight attendant had hinted at providing everyone with bus or train rides, but we didn’t know how far they would take us.
The rest of my friends were on their phones looking up things, too. I didn’t know how else to help, so I turned back to my homework.
My heart was hammering and my head started to hurt, but I continued reading. There wasn’t much else I could do. I couldn’t go anywhere, and everyone else seemed to be handling the important stuff.
To my panicking friends, I looked as if I was calm. Relaxed, even. While they were all scrambling to figure out what to do, holding onto their seat handles with one hand to keep from flying off with each bump and jolt, I sat there reading my book. I’m sure that seemed strange to them, but it was all I could do to keep from crying or hyperventilating.
Finally, when we had concluded our backup plan and accepted our fate, the flight attendant informed us that the fog had cleared. We would be landing in Eindhoven.
Relief permeated the recirculated air on that plane as everyone took a collective sigh. But we quickly snapped out of it with the next jostle of the plane. All we really wanted was to make it to the ground safely.
Within a few hours, we had made it back to our castle. The taxi driver who took us there was late, but ended up being very affable and came prepared with bottles of water for us all. And although my anxiety from the flight had not faded, the driver’s friendliness and the fact that I would have a bed to sleep on that night was comforting.
I’m not sure I would consider this my absolute worst plane ride ever. Once I was sick with pneumonia on a ride home from Florida, and I had my eardrums inverted–worst pain I’ve ever felt! But this ride sits at the top of the list.