Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Airport nightmares

"We'll be flying straight in to the airport which will cut off some travel time. So please fasten your seatbelts as we have started our decent to the airport."

Phew, I thought. I did my research before taking this flight, wondering what all these airports are like because of my slight fear of flying (kinda a problem when you need to do it for a living....)and I encountered that Tegucigalpa (isn't it just fun to sound out?) is one of the most dangerous to land in, in the world. Really, I wasn't thinking too much at that point - I had left Boston very early in the morning Sunday and hadn't gotten a wink of sleep before changing from Valentine's day going-out clothes into appropriate airport-lounging attire in order to be at the airport at 3:30 am to prepare for my international flight.

Ugh. But phew. From his words of assurance - now I could relax. As we neared closer to the ground, I started feeling the plane tip from side to side as I looked out the window to see mountains eye-level at a close distance. Was the pilot tricking us? We weren't flying straight! I thought we were done with the worst of it, and was just about to land when all of a sudden the plane tipped entirely to one side (or so it seemed) and looking out the window on the left there were cars and highways and houses directly below us; I swore the wing was going to hit, and I nearly had a heart-attack and was clearly holding my breath. Suddenly we evened back out, and just a few seconds later we landed on the ground. The guy sitting next to me looked at me, smiled, and breathed out with me... and then I realized how nervous I must have just looked. The plane erupted with clapping. But most importantly, I lived to say I survived one of the most dangerous airports to land in, in the world :)

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