Mark Blevis

I’ve done a lot of flying over the years. In the fall of 1998, I earned enough air miles in a three month stretch to fly my family to California. My air travel has picked up, again, this fall.

When you spend a lot of time in flight, you expect — or at least experience — the odd scare. There was a flight to Chicago that hit an air pocket and went in to a short free-fall, and the turbo-prop from New Jersey that was seemingly tossed around in bad weather shortly after take off.

Yesterday I had my first “this is it” scare. Andrea and I were on United Express flight UA7629 en route to Chicago for a Kidlit conference (NOTE: we are safe and sound in Chicago so there is a very happy ending to this story; keep reading). As the plane approached Lake Michigan it suddenly went in to an extended nose-down dive. In my experience, passenger aircraft don’t just suddenly pitch down.

I struggled with the need to be scared. I decided to be dismissive and let the moment pass and correct itself. It continued. In fact, the plane seemed to level off for a moment and then dive, again — on reflection, the multi-staged aspect may have made the whole thing more scary. I didn’t measure time but if I had to guess, somewhere between fifteen and twenty seconds passed before I looked across the plane to another traveler. I had decided, based on a brief observation of him earlier in the flight, that he had the look of someone who would reassure me that everything would be alright. He didn’t. He looked back at me with a “prepare for the end” look radiating from his face and body posture.

We did eventually level off.

The extraordinarily hard landing drew audible disapproval, and relief, from the passengers.

As we prepared to get off the plane, I spoke with the passenger from across the aisle. He is a frequent air traveler and claimed that he had never experienced a scare like that before and felt that the landing was extraordinary.

The flight crew did not volunteer any explanation or apology for the dive or landing. I had considered questioning them. I didn’t. I was too anxious to get off the plane and enjoy life.