Deprived of sight and with not much to listen for, you start to contemplate. You think of everything that, until a few moments ago, didn’t seem important. You start to wonder about back home, did you pay this, pay that? Does she have everything she needs to get through the coming months without me? Have I forgotten anything? Will my little girl understand when her mother tells her “Daddy can’t ring, he’s working?”
The occasional jolt of the hurtling aircraft brings you back to the present. You’re keenly aware that you’re deep in Afghan airspace, on approach and vulnerable. As you scan the inky darkness, your eyes begin to adjust and you can make out row upon row of others, dressed exactly as yourself, sitting quietly.
There’s very little conversation and the snippets I hear are of a nervous excitement. I don’t care who you are or how many times you’ve done this, there is an apprehension. Your life is in the hands of others right now and you deal with that apprehension in your own way. You may natter something to the guy next to you, who invariably just agrees with whatever you said then returns to his own thought processes. He may joke back and you both share a chuckle, but ultimately, you’ll both fall silent.
It’s not unusual to feel at ease on an aircraft, commuters do it everyday. They put their lives in the hands of others everyday and usually more than once. Here though, you’re acutely aware of it. As an engineer, I feel every jolt of the airframe and process whether or not it’s
normal or a problem. I can’t help that. I rely on other engineers to do their job so that when the pilot selects a function, it works as advertised. I’m relying on Air Traffic Control clearing the airspace and guiding this behemoth onto the tarmac safely, and of course, we rely on the aircrew to get us down in one piece.
A sudden bang under the airframe and the rising noise of rushing air pulls you back again. The undercarriage doors have just opened and the massive legs extend to dangle the tyres out into the night air. We’re getting close now. We must be low. In your head, you hark back to when you were young looking up at these massive aircraft coming into land, and how big and slow they seem top be. How much of a target they look now. These next few minutes are going to seem like forever. Every pitch or roll of the aircraft, as the pilot lines up his approach, is perceived to be an avoidance of imminent danger. Every groan and creak of the ageing airframe is a portent that something mechanical is wrong. My mind plays these tricks on me no matter how many times I find myself here.
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