A Plane?

We descended roughly through the marshmallow fog in shuddering jolts, seemingly a foot down at a time. The plane just wouldn't stay horizontal, it kept banking left and then right. It seemed that it had been a long time since the pilots had announced we were descending into Laredo.

I couldn't see a thing out the window except the occasional flash from the landing lights when the fog opened up a few feet. The pilots kept cutting engine power only to run them up again, in an effort to descend at a constant rate.

It seemed unusual to me to have so much fog in the dessert.

The rain started abruptly. Torrential. The extra mass of all that water pulled on the plane in waves, a kind of water-brake. We started dropping in bigger steps now, and with more regularity.

The view out my window was still completely white, with rain streaks blowing off fast. I imagine the pilots couldn't see any better. They were on instruments, for sure.

This was an old turboprop ATR, moved down here to the desert southwest after they were found to have wing icing problems that had caused several terrible accidents. I'm no expert, but I saw pretty clear-cut icing conditions right outside my window.

The pilots were young, very young. They looked barely eighteen. One had a skinny neck far smaller than his shirt collar and tie. The other one had acne. I wondered how much experience these pilots had, and of that, how much was in bad weather landing.

I imagined that they gave new pilots these exact kinds of routes. I would if I were the one deciding. You don't give newbies the New York to London 747-400 flights with lots of rich people aboard going off to exotic vacations and corporate takeovers. You stick them in older planes, on short-hop flights, straight shots across bleak desert landscape, full of low-end salesmen and groups of old widows going on their yearly "get aways". Nobody anyone would miss. Nobody with an expensive lawyer on retainer and a 500-series Benz in the garage.

One of the pilots opened the cockpit door to ask the lone flight attendant for some coffee. After receipt of the drink he left the door open. I was in row 2, and could now see right out the front windows of the aircraft.

Nothing but featureless white.

So, I was traveling in an aircraft with a penchant for icing up, in perfect icing conditions, being flown by two kids who should be mowing my lawn instead of flying people around in bad weather. I looked around the plane. So these are the people I am going to die with. An interesting enough bunch. A big sweaty business man in a crumpled suit. I'll bet he didn't wake up this morning thinking he was going to end up sprinkled across the desert. And what about the Mexican guy in the nice clothes with the bola tie? He just wants to go home to Guadalajara after a long week selling produce in the US. Now he's never going to kiss Maria again.

I was jolted from those pleasant thoughts by a series of severe bumps. The engines wound down. I could hear the landing gear being lowered, and the long whine of the wing flaps extending.

We were landing. One way or another.

I glanced over at the kindly old woman sitting across the narrow isle from me. She was praying the rosary and looking rather pale. She forced a smile as she looked up at me.

Out my window I saw a runway sign float by, ghostlike in the gloom. We hit the pavement hard, bouncing. At that point, things happened fast.

The pilots spun the engines up to full speed rapidly, and the plane lifted up with a powerful sweeping arc. We then banked to the right hard and the wing tip on that side barely cleared the tarmac.

As we climbed up and out of our turn, on our way to a redo of the landing, I distinctly heard the pilot say to the co-pilot:

"Was that a plane?!?"