Leaving On A Jet Plane?

“The fasten-your-seat-belt sign is ON,” shrieked the frazzled flight attendant as she chased me down the carpeted aisle. “I’m sorry,” I stammered, feeling like a frail gazelle in the clutches of a rabid hyena, “but I’ve been drinking coffee all day and we’ve been flying for two hours.”

“It’s captain’s orders,” she said curtly, gesturing to the cockpit. She exchanged nervous glances with her wide-eyed colleague, who had strapped herself to her seat.

As I walked back to my own seat—the frenzied flight attendant right on my heels—I began to worry. Maybe the “indicator problem” the captain spoke of was, contrary to his soothing claims, actually something to worry about. The plane continued to circle Logan airport, a mere 10,000 feet above the city. I buckled up and picked up the safety card.

On that day—Dec. 20, 2005—Midwest Airlines flight 210 from Boston en route to Milwaukee was beset by a dangerous mechanical problem, which caused the landing gear to emit a shower of sparks as it rose into the air. For those of us aboard, who had no idea anything had gone awry, the malfunction was a bothersome inconvenience, a mere “problem with the indicator,” as the captain so vaguely and reassuringly cooed over the intercom. The plane circled Logan for two hours, burning off fuel so as to minimize the risk of explosion upon emergency landing.

Meanwhile, my mother crouched teary-eyed in front of in the television screen, as my plane was depicted circling the airport on CNN News amid much ominous speculation. As for me, I reluctantly buried myself in Justice readings, straining under the pressure of a very full bladder, and I wondered why the pilot insisted upon spending two hours flying in circles when he could just as easily burn off fuel in a straight line, in the direction of happy Milwaukee. I was blissfully ignorant, if slightly irritated.

But as the plane descended to a veritable horde of emergency vehicles, lights flashing in anxious anticipation, I realized what the whole world except for the passengers on board flight 210 knew: the plane—and our lives—had been in serious danger the whole time. Following a quick tow to the deserted gate, Midwest graciously wined and dined its inconvenienced passengers, put us up in the airport Hilton, and offered us two “unrestricted” round trip ticket vouchers to anywhere Midwest Airlines flies. Which, by the way, is not just the mid-west.

I reeled at the severity of the incident. The similar JetBlue incident on Sept. 21 came to mind, in which an airplane had to make an emergency landing with its front landing gear stuck sideways. And who could forget the tragic Southwest Airlines catastrophe—which came barely two weeks before the Midwest incident—in which a jet trying to land in heavy snow and ice slid off a runway at Midway International Airport in Chicago, crashing through a fence, injuring 10 people, and killing a 6-year-old boy.

I consider this incident an opportunity for reflection. Most of us board airplanes—and carry out countless other mildly dangerous tasks every day—without thinking twice about the risks involved. We like to think that the tragedies we witness on the news take place in a separate realm of existence, far from the impressive Ivory Tower and the invincible Harvard student. But in this new year, let’s remember that even in our seemingly impregnable world of airbags and antibacterial soap, planes malfunction, cars crash, and silent epidemics propagate in the most unsuspecting populations. Even though we tend to take it for granted, life is in the often tremulous hands of the force of nature.



James H. O’Keefe ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Grays Hall.