On September 14, 2011, I boarded UA 586 from Washington, DC to San Francisco. The Boeing 757-200 departed on time. Our office was holding an open house that evening and I was dressed in a dark suit and tie with newly purchased dark mahogany shoes.
I was seated next to the exit window. The air in the plane felt really warm and I took off my shoes. On the TV screen, the airline’s CEO was telling us that this was the world’s best airline but the screen, like the air conditioning in the plane, kept cutting in and out.
Suddenly the screen went blank. And when it relit, the CEO was gone. In his place was some orange gibberish. I said, “This is a plane that should not be flying.” Then a weird alarm sounded, like the kind in the submarine movie, “Run Silent, Run Deep.”
A frenzied man, the purser, who had previously emerged to look out on the wing to my right from one of the windows, commanded, “Evacuate.”
I froze. A balding man with an erect bearing sitting right in front of me stood up, and commanded, “Open that window.” Maybe he was an air marshal. I responded immediately but wondered if I would be able to life the 49lbs object.
A frenzied man, the purser, who had previously emerged to look out on the wing to my right from one of the windows, commanded, ‘Evacuate’. I froze. A balding man sitting right in front of me stood up, and said, ‘Open that window.’ Maybe he was an air marshal
I pulled on the handle fully expecting it not to budge, welded by mistake or jammed because the rubber seals had hardened. Well, as I tugged on the red bar that says Pull, the window responded instantly. Suddenly another handle appeared. I grabbed both and tossed the window out. In a flash, I jumped out of the tiny opening and into the welcoming air of a perfect September day.
Lifting the window was much easier than I had realized. It certainly did not feel like 49lbs. More like 10lbs. in the adrenalin rush.
Now what? I was standing on the wing, silver and glistening, literally “on a wing and a prayer.” An inner voice said, “Jump.” The voice said again, “Jump.” My body refused the command. The wing was far above the ground. I walked toward the end of the wing in the hope that it would be closer to the ground but it was not any closer.
I walked back to the fuselage. What if the plane is about to explode? Maybe I should take the risk and jump.
Suddenly there was a big whoosh sound, followed by some pixie dust. And then the chute flew out toward the air, opened, and fell toward the ground. A way to the ground had opened for me, like the parting of the Red Sea. I jumped on the chute.
That was the fastest slide ride I had ever had. But I panicked as I realised I was about to hit the concrete and possibly break my legs or go into a summersault. So I tried to brace the impact by extending by hands.
As I hit the tarmac, a mysterious force prevented me from standing up. Instead, it turned me 45 degrees toward my right side and I felt like I was going to roll over. Then the force dissipated. I stood up. Nothing seemed broken. Was the nightmare over?
I started running away from the plane, fearing a fireball would soon emerge from the plane. Images of Matt Damon from the Bourne Conspiracy flashed in my mind. I spotted a passenger who was running away from the plane. He must have come out of the chute in the front, from the main door. I followed him. He ran into a cordon of security personnel who had appeared out of nowhere. They said, “Where do you think you are going?” He said I am running away from the plane. They told him to go to the other side of the plane. And so did I.
Passengers were pouring out of the plane. People were snapping away with their phones. One was Tweeting images, I later learned.
The plane looked like a sick puppy, with chutes hanging from all sides.
The knuckles on my right hand hurt. I looked at them. They looked red. The torn white skin stood up, making it look like I was wearing five crowns on each hand. My palms had abrasions. My right knee hurt. I pulled up my trousers. The knees were red with torn skin. But there was no pain and the trousers were not torn.
My mind said, forget the trivia and thank your stars. You are alive and not on fire. They shuttled us to the airline lounge. I did not have my shoes or bags and that thought began to gnaw at me. My iPhone did not have much charge left in it and my charger was on the plane.
Thankfully, I found another passenger who loaned her charger to me. I called my wife and sent out a few emails to friends and family and work-mates. They responded immediately. My daughter called me.
As I looked around the lounge, I noticed I was the only one without shoes. In the lounge, strangers bonded. The captain confessed that nothing like this had happened to him in his 30 years of flying. But some were quiet. Others had injuries and were getting medical attention. One was carried away on a stretcher.
We also saw our plane on the local TV channel and discovered that a judge of the US Supreme Court was on our flight. That created a buzz. A few days later, I would discover that the US Commerce Secretary was also on the flight. And, of course, it was the week of 9/11.
But what mattered most was that we were alive and largely uninjured. We had just taken part in an episode of the Survivors that would never be aired.
Four hours later, we were taken, row by row, to collect our bags, which were being brought out by the airline’s ground crew. I was reunited with my possessions and felt as if my soul had been returned to me.
I told another passenger that a miracle had occurred but he made a face. I said I really did not expect to get my computer back and having it returned to me was nothing short of a human miracle. Then he smiled and agreed.
About five hours after the incident, we took off uneventfully in a wide-bodied 767. Yes, my kneecap was hurting and I had a sore back. But we were homeward bound and that was all that mattered.
I was traumatized for days on end. But fate had determined that I would be flying again in a week. I asked the purser of that flight if he knew anything about what had happened last week to that flight from DC. I said I had to jump out through the exit window and injured myself. He froze. Then he said: “There is no easy way to do it.”
I have been flying safely since without incident, on the same airline, often on a 757.
The writer has visited 35 countries on six continents. He can be reached at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, October 16th 2017.