Thailand/UAE/UK, 2005
Six classmates from business school vacationed in Thailand. On the return flight from Bangkok to Gatwick, the plane started to descend 3 hours into a 5-hour flight. We were told that this was a scheduled refuel stop. For a direct flight, this seemed out of the ordinary, but I suppose there was no claim that this is a non-stop flight. Slight technicality in terminology between direct and non-stop!
After sitting on the runway for a couple hours when we should have landed back in London by now, we were asked to deplane in order to refuel safely. Upon exiting the ramp, we were given a playing card, e.g. queen of diamonds or king of hearts, as a re-boarding pass. Shortly after we re-boarded moments later, I dozed off but was half-awakened when the plane began to accelerate on the runway. All of a sudden, I heard screaming from the cabin behind us. I still remember distinctly to this day that when I turned around to see what's happening in the back, everything happened in slow motion: the flight attendant running down the aisle, reached for the phone and yelled, "STOP THE PLANE, STOP THE PLANE!" Our bodies charged forward as the plane braked and screeched to a stop.
We were going to be spending a night in Sharjah. When we exited the airport, the custom officers took all our passports since we didn't have visa to be in the country. We weren't given any instruction so we kept a lookout at the hotel for the bus that would take us back to the airport at any moments' notice. Meanwhile, we only had a $10 US dollar bill to use for food/water between the six of us because we were living in London at the time and had British Pounds on us but only local currency or US dollar were accepted there. We survived the night with little food and water.
The next morning, back at the airport, the British Embassy representatives were there. They advised the passengers not to get back on the plane because they believe the plane is unsafe. Our first option was to take a 40-min bus to Dubai and purchase a British Airways ticket, take the 40-min bus back to Sharjah and show the physical ticket along with your embassy representative to get our passports back, then take another 40-min bus back to Dubai and fly out from there. Option two was to wait for the next flight coming through and some of the passengers can get on that flight based on availability with priorities given to children and elderlies. Given we were six healthy twenty-something year olds, we ruled the second option out. The last option was to get back on our original flight.
Amongst ourselves, we acknowledged that we would all make our own individual choices. No groupthink. The first one of us to decide to get on the original plane had an Indian passport, so he wasn't going to bet on when or if his embassy will arrive. I went next based on the logic that the pilots aren't on suicide missions so should be safe. One by one, we all got back on the plane. Turned out most of the rest of the passengers chose one of the other two options because it went from a full flight to each of us having a whole row of seats.
When we finally landed safely in Gatwick a day later than scheduled, the airport was buzzing with heavy security guards and news reporters. Even our cab driver had been following the development of the story. What we didn't know yet then was the same plane had another mechanical issue in the air the next day, and was turned around and grounded indefinitely. Moreover, the next plane from option two also had mechanical issue in Sharjah so even more passengers were stranded there. The newspaper called the planes "the flying coffins" and the airline was banned from flying in the EU space.
That's one of my most memorable travel tales. What's yours?
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