The Frailty of a Landing

A dangerous time to be airborne

Photo by author, but it is also taken by every person sitting on the dangerous window seat.

The airplane was one foot off the ground from the Harry Reid International Airport runway when it took back up — almost as if saying, “Psych!!!!”

I had just experienced, and not for the first time, a rejected landing.

Obviously, something happened. Maybe the pilot came down a little too late, or he was going to run out of runway. Rejected landings are not great, but they are better than for-sure-crashings.

The pilot comes on (after a few turns too late) to announce (way too close to the microphone the way pilots do), “Folks, everything is okay in the front. The runway got too tight, and we had to take it back up. We will be landing in five minutes.”

Moments like this make me appreciate when I’d fly back to Barranquilla, and once the plane landed, every passenger would break into applause and hug their neighbors.

Of course, the practice is ludicrous, but moments like this make me appreciate it.

My wife, who was a flight attendant for a few years, militantly reminds me that most accidents happen at take-off and landing.

Think of Asiana Airlines Flight 214. On a flight from Incheon to San Francisco, the motor was idle at the landing and hit a seawall with its tail instead of…