Dunaber Music

Trans-Atlantic Travel: 10 Years Ago Tonight

September 4, 2008 on 9:28 pm by Michael Grey | In Stories, Tips | Comments Off

Ten years ago this evening I had the worst flying experience of my life.  I’m reminded of this because this week marks the tenth anniversary of the awful Swissair flight 111 tragedy and this sad fact has been in the news.

Along with Malkie Bow (he of the “Consternation“) I used to own a business that sold bagpipes and assorted stuff.  The business of “Celtworks” used to call for regular short business trips to Scotland.  Labour Day weekend ten years ago was one of those trips. 

We’d booked a quick (and cheap) trip on the now-defunct charter company, Royal Airlines.  The plan was for four days overseas including business and a stop at the British Pipe Band Championships, Rouken Glen, Glasgow.  Over and back in short, productive and uneventful order.  The flight from Toronto to Glasgow is normally six and a half hours so this was an entirely doable plan. 

We boarded the plane, settled in and after couple of hours or so – just east of Newfoundland - just as we hit the open expanse of the North Atlantic, something was amiss.

I turned to Malkie, just as we’d finished our chickeny supper, and said, “do you smell something?”.  He nodded with what I recall as an unnerving degree of seriousness.  There was a distinct odour of burning plastic in the air.  The same kind of smell that would cause you alarm - freak you out, really – should you catch it while watching TV at home – never mind 10,000 meters in the air.

Within seconds the smoke alarms in the toilets were activated.  A slight haze of smoke could be seen at the front of the cabin.  I remember hoping against hope that some nicotine-crazed passenger was puffing up a storm in one of the toilets and had maybe melted his lighter or some damned thing all in an effort for a furtive smoke.  As if! Not to be.  The Captain came on and in a voice muffled and clearly distorted by an oxygen mask announced to the packed passengers on his 757 that we had some problems, needed to land as soon as possible and we were to prepare for an emergency landing in Goose Bay, Labrador - 20 minutes away.  

Royal Airlines was a cheapie airline with flight attendants of the most inexperienced kind (ok – I don’t know that but they all looked about 16 years old).  After the Captain spoke the flight attendants skittered up and down the aisles with green garbage bags sweeping platters and rubbish off passenger trays – and – they were all sobbing!  Crying up a storm!  Nice.  Through the blurry haze of their tear-filled eyes they somehow managed to instruct passengers on the emergency landing procedures and positions (to this day I do not understand how crossed wrists holding rested head helps any landing – or anything – maybe it’s the “cross” part?).

The Swissair disaster had happened only 36 hours earlier not far from us, over St Margaret’s Bay, Nova Scotia.  It was all over the news.  Every gory detail.  Everyone had seen the news.  It was on everyone’s mind.   I remember thinking what strange, awful, goddammed luck we had.  We didn’t talk much as the plane approached Goose Bay.  A lot of people were weeping.  Some, we found out later, were writing final notes to loved ones.  God knows how their bits of paper would be found in the indescribable mess that we’d surely be should we hit the ground.  

So, here I am, so you know we land.  By the time we touch down, about 0300 h local time, the plane is full of a weeping crew and a lot of greetin‘ elderly folks, only a few hours earlier simply hoping for a cheap trip to the old country for a wee holiday.  With yellow school buses waiting on the tarmac, off we all go to the NATO barracks in Goose Bay, Labrador.  A fine breakfast awaited us with members of the German air force.  We were assigned bunks and, with no information from Royal, we resigned ourselves to an indefinite stay on NATO’s chit.

This story is full of characters and commotion and a good few twists and turns.  Remarkable, really, this all happened in such a short period of time.  Malkie and I had decided to kill some time so we jumped in a taxi (or the taxi?) and went in to town only to breakdown at the only set of stoplights in Goose Bay.  Cursed?  It was beyond that. 

By 2000 h or so we finally found ourselves on a barely reconditioned “Air Borat” 727 (a plane not built for overseas air travel) and on our way.  Once in the air we were advised of the super special added value stops in our Glasgow journey:  first Keflavik, Iceland to refuel, then Manchester, England, to unload passengers and then Glasgow.   With the week’s real air disaster so fresh and still on the front pages of international media our emergency landing was a media cause célèbre. TV cameras, reporters and flashing cameras greeted us at GLA arrivals.  Many passengers, emotionally drained (and, quite honestly, hungover), revelled in the drama.  Their stories were eaten up by the local media.  Anyway, for Malkie and me, the late afternoon mud of Rouken Glen never felt so good.

One of the perils of flying charter is to be remembered: if one plane goes tits up, flight schedules are seriously screwed. 

Our trip home Monday, on a leased ”Air Luxor” plane, saw a reverse repeat of the Toronto outbound itinerary: Glasgow-Manchester-Keflavik-Goose Bay-Toronto.  A weekend and a journey never to be forgotten.

With so many pipers and pipe bands crossing the Atlantic these days I’ve occasionally wondered why more don’t have stories like mine – or worse. 

And the tip, of course: if at all possible never fly charter.  Never.

As a once fearless flyer, I was a while recovering from this episode. 

M.