How do I put this delicately?
That's what the pilot announced over the speakers about an hour into American Airlines flight 1869 travelling from Dallas to San Francisco on Jan 1st, 2006. He had just informed of the passengers and crew that an emergency landing was about to take place -- into Amarillo, Texas. "We have a loss of flight controls. We are seeing inputs into the flight controls that are not being made by myself or the first officer." Basically, our rudder was getting a mind of its own he later explained.
I was relieved to hear that announcement. For about five minutes prior to the announcement the plane had been banked right and decending fast. I was a little concerned at first when I heard a shudder and surprised to see us turn in mid flight. When I was certain something was wrong (since commercial flights tend not to waste gas doing circles in mid flight) and no announcement came from the captain, for the first time in a long time, I panicked and felt my pulse race a bit. Hearing that something was indeed wrong made me feel better, although other passengers who were sleeping or unaware of the situation gasped.
The emergency landing into Amarillo was uneventful except for the jack rabbit that scurried across the runway as we landed and the applause in the cabin. Once at a stop, the captain toured the cabin and answered questions from passengers and said it'd be probably three to four hours before they would be able to get a plane into Amarillo to ferry us to San Francisco. "But it's better to be down here wishing you were up there than to be up there wishing you were down here," he said.
I had never been so happy to set my foot on Texas soil.
Waiting in the lounge we watched "Anchorman" with Laura, a design student and intern who had been in Hong Kong and was on her way to an internship in San Francisco. Then while eating pizza with Lisa, an 81 year old woman named Phyllis fell face first down the escalators. I think it's the first time I heard "Help! Help!". I ran over, saw a motionless woman, face down, head-first decending accompanied by women who were now frentic. I was able to hit the emergency stop button just before the poor woman was about to be swept by the bottom flange of the escalator. She was talking about five minutes later although was still motionless waiting for the parametics. That was the second emergency of the day.
Previous to that second emergency, while waiting in the lounge, a woman (A teacher at UNR) came up and asked if Lisa and I had been in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. It turns out she had seen us at many different places over the past two weeks and was even in MNG and ZARA when Lisa was doing some shopping and shared our flight home. What of accidents, incidents and coincidence.
Too much excitement to start the new year.