Turbulence

EVERYONE knows that airplanes crash.

That’s why, for years, I’ve always contemplated death when boarding a flight. Could this, I can’t help wondering, be when it happens? Am I taking my last trip?

Strangely, I forgot about all that last week while boarding a Cebu Pacific flight from Cebu to Surigao. It was only a short domestic jump. And having just deplaned after a quick hop from Bacolod where we’d been partying with friends, well, sudden, horrific, agonizing death was the last thing on my mind.

Until we started landing at Surigao Airport.

Without warning, the plane began to rattle. Only slightly at first, but as we descended toward the runway, the rattle became a shake that turned into a roar. It was as if a giant hand had grabbed our craft and was waving it in the wind like a toy.

“Oh my God,” Ivy said, “this doesn’t feel right.”

All around us, passengers sat in stunned silence as the walls of the airplane felt ready to crumble. Then, within a few feet of the ground, we suddenly pulled up. “So sorry,” the captain calmly explained, “we just made a missed approach because of high winds. We assure you that everything is under control; please bear with us while we try again.”

That’s when I started praying. “Please God,” I silently repeated, thinking of the little ones on the ground as we once again descended into the gust, “don’t let this happen to our children.”

This time we got even closer before the captain, no longer able to tolerate the increasingly mad shudder, finally gave up. “I’m sorry,” he repeated over the intercom, less calm than before, “we are proceeding back to Mactan.”

And so we arrived in Surigao the next morning on the overnight ferry instead of by plane.

It wasn’t the first time I’d encountered difficulties at Surigao Airport. Several years ago, in fact, I have ushered off a Manila-bound flight due to “mechanical issues.” After a two-hour wait, the passengers re-boarded to hear an announcement. “Attention,” the static-infested voice from the cockpit said, “there’s good news and bad.” The bad news, it went on, was that the airplane couldn’t turn right. The good news: was that there were no right turns en route to Manila.

Our local airport has certainly had its share of woes over the years. Back in 2017, a full 700 meters of the original 1,700-meter runway got destroyed by a 6.7 magnitude earthquake. The damage led to the suspension of seven weekly Philippine Airlines flights between Manila and Surigao. By 2019, 400 of the wrecked meters had been restored, but I can find no information regarding the remaining 300. Then, in 2021, the airport closed for ten days due to the damage caused by Typhoon Odette.

Our wobbly would-be landing, of course, could have been much worse. Recently the Washington Post reported on a United Airlines flight that took off from Maui airport in Hawaii, ascended 2,200 feet into the sky, and then, for reasons unknown, plunged 1,400 feet in 18 seconds, almost crashing into the sea.

Rod Williams, a 35-year-old real estate agent from Ohio, “looked across his two children to his wife,” the newspaper reported, “both understanding the severity of the danger. They were scared. He started praying for God to send angels to help the pilots fly and land the plane safely. Then ‘an unusual peace’ came over him. ‘You kind of have to accept that because there’s nothing you can do to change what’s going on,’ he said.”

I too felt that peace. They say there are no atheists in crashing airplanes.

(David Haldane’s latest book, “A Tooth in My Popsicle,” is available on Lazada and Shopee. A former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, where he contributed to two Pulitzer Prize-winning stories, Haldane is an award-winning journalist, author, and radio broadcaster with homes in Joshua Tree, California, and Surigao City.)