I have been travelling back and forth from nepal to usa several times. Most of the flights have been pretty smooth, thanks to qatar airways. I had experienced little anxieties during take offs but it was minimal. There were also occasional turbulences mid air for brief moments which you get used to after flying for a while.
However , this incident once shook me to my core. I am usually paying attention to the flight details as I have always been a curious cat. I usually look at the altitude we are flying and other cool information they provide in your screen. We were supposed to land at Hamad international airport. It was around december and was really cold and there was a dense fog around the airport.
The flight crew reported that we will be preparing for the landing and instruct us to not to leave our seats and fasten our seat belts. When they do that, its usually after couple of minutes we will be touching the ground. This time around , things were a little different . I was looking at the altitude and it was decreasing rapidly and yet we werent totally on the ground . It was totally weird . After a while they didnt even show the altitude . it was almost over 10 minutes and this wait time to touch the ground was painstakingly slow.
I looked around everyone was just staying quiet and normal. I tried to console myself , that everything was alright and there was nothing to fear about. However ,The dense fog outside and the altitude data disappearing was a bad sign. The altitude data reappeared and weird way it was actually going up . So basically the landing must have been cancelled. I saw little worried faces after 15 minutes or so of the announced landing. We were nowhere near the ground. Thats when i started hearing children cry out of nowhere. They were crying as if they felt something . My mind started working overtime and started thinking about all the plausible negative scenarios. One was they couldnt land on the airport because of poor visibility , second the plane had lost its direction. and third and scary one was we might crash somewhere soon . As I was having all these negative scenarios in my head , the boeing basically took the sharpest turn ever that I have experienced while travelling. Everyone basically were tilted to our right like we were in a rollercoaster. The big boeing was literally sideways when it took that turn. This scare the living shit out of everyone including me , Then , I saw a scene that I had never encountered in my whole life while inside a plane. All these people in the plane were literally praying to their gods. This scene was almost as if we were nearing the end of our lives. Muslims were bowing down praying to allah, christians were calling jesus and Me , ofocurse motivated was trying to pray to my Hindu gods. I think i actually promised to go to a temple, if i land alive which i fulfilled . The crying of kids after the turn got worse and increased in numbers. Some of the adults were also in a panicking mode. In midst of all this, the plane took another sharp turn and i hear people shouting out loud. The second turn wasnt as bad as first one though.
After another painful anxious ten minutes, came the another announcement about landing. This time I was literally crossing my fingers and praying it lands safely with others. After another ten minutes or so the plane finally landed on the ground. Everyone gave a big sigh of relief, but my heart was still pounding like it wanted to come out of the chest.
I knew it could have been lot worse. I didnt even try to find out what caused that. Probably the runway wasnt available and they had to reboot the whole landing process or they couldnt see it through that dense fog. Whatever the reason was, I would never want to experience such flying incident ever.
For a moment, I thought that could be the end of my life. I even went to a few trips on my bucket list after this incident . It included a new year celebration in times square and a gambling trip to atlantic city with my friends. I came back broke with no money but it was a satisfying memorable experience much needed after that horrible flight experience.
Yours sincerely,
Abhi Nepali