My plane almost collided with another on a JFK runway—and I feel safer than ever about flying.
I was supposed to be on the beach right now. Instead, I’ve been on TV.
Friday night, I was a passenger aboard Delta Flight 1943 — the Dominican Republic–bound 737 that almost T-boned another jet at 115 miles per hour on a JFK runway. (The quick thinking of air-traffic control and our pilot averted a calamity. You might have heard about it.)
After I posted a brief account to Twitter Saturday afternoon, interest in my story soared — from longtime friends, distant relatives and (especially) the news media. Everyone wanted to know what it felt like in the cabin: “It must have been terrifying!” “Did you think you were going to die?” (The most common query, at least from the press: “Do you have any photos?”)
It was indeed scary — for no more than five seconds. The engines revved. The plane accelerated. I felt a jolt as the brakes activated. Other passengers gasped. My torso was thrust forward. Adrenaline flowed. Total quiet ensued. The plane came to a stop.
At which point, I knew we would be OK.
What sticks with me most about the incident days afterward is the silence that prevailed in the cabin after the captain came on the PA system, reporting that he would have to “run some checklists” after another aircraft on the runway forced the takeoff termination. During the following 90-some minutes of presumed checklist-running, as I and 145 other passengers waited for something to happen — would we be finally taking off (again)? returning to the gate? evacuating on those inflatable slides? — no one said much of anything. The vibe in the cabin was one of patience. Of composure. Of — dare I even suggest it? — calm.
My vibe? One of slight impatience, at the captain’s clear yet terse and infrequent updates. When we finally returned to the gate, disembarked and formed a long queue at customer service to get our hotel and taxi vouchers (the departure having been pushed back to the following morning), I sulked for a bit, disappointed that my husband and I would be denied our short beach getaway. How petty.
It wasn’t until details began to emerge the following day that I realized how major a potential catastrophe we had dodged. In the days since, amid all the media coverage of the event’s drama (which one friend described as “trauma porn”), my vibe has settled into one of gratitude.
For the JFK air-traffic controllers, who issued the command to abort the takeoff with such expletive-laced gusto. For the Delta customer-service agents in the terminal, who managed to stay smiling as they assisted a planeload of cranky passengers six hours into a trip to nowhere. And most of all for the captain of our flight, whose professionalism and quick thinking under pressure continues to astound me.
Imagine being in the cockpit during those seconds before and during the incident, and the long minutes that followed. All the heated chatter that must have been coming across every communication channel. The tense conversations with the flight crew as they assessed which protocols to follow. The sheer rush of it all.
And yet we passengers had no inkling of any of it, as we sat there in the darkened cabin on that taxiway. Surely, pandemonium would have ensued had the captain told us that we had stopped 1,000 feet short of a high-speed encounter with a 777. The crew’s minimalist, need-to-know-basis communication style served the moment perfectly.
In brief Zoom interviews (goaded by producers for more color, more details, more excitement) or live on the air of Fox News (where I was squeezed in between high-octane segments with Caitlyn Jenner and Vivek Ramaswamy), I struggled to convey that, far from traumatized, I felt reassured. It was a near miss, yes. But a miss nonetheless.
Someone messed up big-time on that JFK tarmac Friday night; the ongoing investigation will reveal just what happened, and make recommendations to reduce the chance of whatever happened ever happening again. Yet most of the players didn’t mess up — they shined. Professionals did their thing, and well. The system worked.
Over the last few days, many have asked me if I’m too scared to ever fly again. Far from it.
In fact, I’m off on my postponed Caribbean beach getaway Saturday morning. Departing from JFK.
