Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Tonight's picture was taken in April of 2006. Mattie was at his fourth birthday party. The first party we held outside of our home. We hosted a party for several of Mattie's preschool friends at the Riverbend Nature Center. Mattie had a great day walking on a nature trail, getting to meet some reptiles and bugs with a naturalist, and also doing a pretend archaeological dig in a sandbox. Certainly no party would be complete without a pinata. The party theme that year was dinosaurs, so you see that carried over into the pinata. 




Quote of the day: The whole world can become the enemy when you lose what you love. ~ Kristina McMorris

It is 2:30am and I consider myself lucky to be alive tonight and back home. It literally took Peter and I almost 12 hours to get home today from Phoenix. I will highlight our conference experience tomorrow. Because unfortunately our airplane trip home supersedes all my other experiences today. 

Our flight was supposed to leave Phoenix at 12:40pm. However, there was no plane at our gate and therefore we understood there was going to be a delay. About an hour later, we board the plane and take off. Peter snapped some wonderful photos along the day. You can see just how densely packed Phoenix is from the sky. 

Any case, as we were taking off, it became very bumpy.  I took note of this but then other things started to happen. Such as I felt like we were gliding rather than moving with jet power. Also in my opinion it felt like we were moving in slow motion, and I assessed we were not climbing in altitude as one would typical do on ascent. However, I chalked it up to my anxieties, since we literally were dealing with this for over twenty minutes and the pilot said nothing. However, he then came on the PA system and told us there was a problem. 

The pilot said that a high speed warning light kept going off. He further explained that we had to return back around and land in Phoenix. He told us we were safe and that we would make a normal landing. Nothing about this flight felt normal and literally this big Airbus was felt like it was flapping and floating in the wind. This 45 minute ordeal made me so nauseous I had to take anti-nausea meds to function. It was very scary.

When we safely landed, the pilot said in his 25 years of flying Airbuses, he has NEVER seen or experienced such a warning. 

So what was the warning? The pilot explained it once we were on the ground. The computer system on the plane felt that the wing flaps (used to slow down the plane, especially during landings) were out. Meaning that we should be de-accelerating. However, every time he tried to increase speed, as one definitely needs to do at take off, the warning light would go off preventing him for reaching the speeds he needed. Though the flaps were technically working, the computer did not register it that way, and apparently the computer has a great deal of say in terms of how the plane can function. Which is a rather scary notion. 

I was thrilled to get on the ground safely. But we did not know what was going to happen next. While on the ground and in the plane, a maintenance team came aboard and quickly assessed that the plane had to be placed out of service as the issue was too serious to resolve today. 

So we deplaned with the information that another plane was going to be ready for use several gates down. 

So over 200 people de-board the plane and migrate to the next gate. However, within twenty minutes, we learn that this won't be our gate, but we need to walk to a second gate. The communication was poor as was the whole overall operational process. 

So we board the second flight in hopes that everything will be okay. 

However, pilots can only be working a 9-14 hour shift. They can't exceed this! So despite passengers trying to get on the plane quickly and stow luggage, our pilots "timed out." They were literally pulled from service and all the passengers sat aboard the plane with the flight attendants, not knowing what was going to happen next. Of course the next concern was that all the cabin crew were also going to time out and we would be grounded overnight in Phoenix. 

We waited about an hour or longer for a new pilot and co-pilot to show up. But what surprised me were two things..... 1) no one clapped for the wonderful job the first pilot did to land our plane, and 2) I was disappointed in American Airlines lack of graciousness. Passengers were anxious (as some left the planes and refused to fly this flight), thirsty, and hungry. Yet the airline provided nothing during this wait. I get the fact that the flight attendants did not know the status of the flight, and therefore did not want to start any sort of service. But there was no good will gesture. 

Anycase, it is 3am and after what I would call a harrowing day, I am taking to bed.