Tuesday (13th June) started off as a normal day. Tropical Storm Alberto was about to hit the west coast of Florida before noon that day. The weather outside was warm and anyone who did not read about the tropical storm would not have known that one was heading this way. I was about to leave Miami to go to Tallahassee on a business trip. For people who do not know Florida geographically, Tallahassee is Florida’s capital on the close to the Florida/Georgia border, on the northern boundary of Florida. People there wear T-shirts with “A drinking town with a football problem” printed on ’em.

The day was as smooth as it could be. But the day had hardly begun. The flight took off on time and it was a smooth flight. However, one creepy thing did happen. I was on seat 4B, and an elderly couple were sitting in front of me. It was the old man’s birthday. Before the flight took off, he called the <hot> stewardess </hot> and pointed out what appeared to be some crack on his window. She said, “Don’t worry sire, there are many layers of these protective material and you will be fine.” But she took it one more step and said, “If it comforts you, the last flight we took had a crack in the windshield and had duct tape on it, but we were just fine. So there is nothing to worry about”. <sidenote> Are the airlines running in so much loss that routine maintenance and safety checks are taking a backseat? </sidenote>

The travel time from Miami to Tallahassee is an hour and thirty minutes. I am one of those lucky people who can sleep in the flight. I always sleep in airplanes, and by sleep I mean sleep soundly. But it was not meant to be today. The plane (an embraer 145 jet, capable of flying 25000 ft) was being jolted by turbulences and the only calming influence was the pilot who informed that the control tower was keeping us off the big trouble spots. 😀 The on and off jolts soon subsided and we were back on calm seas (or air I should say). 15 more minutes later the pilot announced that the flight was going to Tampa instead of Tallahassee since the airplane had some mechanical problems. The f’ing pilot was so calm that no one was alarmed. I have travelled enough to know how airplanes approach landing strips, but something did not seem right. There was more turbulence when we tried to land, but we eventually landed. And then the reality struck. As the aircraft went into reverse thrust, we could see fire trucks on either side of the runway. Now that really gave me the creeps. But the good thing was that we had landed. It was only after the plane pulled into the tarmac, did the pilot announce that we had had ILS (instrument landing system failure) along with some other avionics failure. I was least interested since I still had to fly back home and did not want to know about what could go wrong in airplanes. I was not there to do research on why planes fall from the air. We got off the flight and we were informed that the next flight to Tally was at 1.30 p.m. It was 9.45 a.m. at that time and I decided to go back to Miami instead. Primarily because my flight out of Tally was at 6.30 pm and I did not want to go try to land in a thunderstorm only to be there for 3 hours. I was informed by my colleague at the Tally office that it was raining cats and dogs. That further reinforced my decision not to go. You might think that the worst has ended. Noooooooooo, hell no. The worst was only about to come.

At 9.55 a.m., the lady at the Delta Airlines counter informed me that Delta did not have direct flights from Tampa to Miami and she had to put me on another airline to take me to Miami. After some elaborated key punching and some frantic telephone calls, she gave me a printed itinerary for a flight to Miami. With a smile she said, “The flight is in 30 mins from now. They might let you through security check using this, but otherwise you will have to go to ticketing and get a boarding pass”. Fuck yeah !! That meant I had to run through the lobby, charge up and down escalators (relative velocity helps) and sidestep 80 year old grand mothers. I made it to the counter and out of it with a boarding pass and the clock had just struck 10.10. The security check was elaborate. It had to be, right? Not only did they do a x-ray, but they had to run chemical checks to see if I was carrying some explosive or garam masala. But that was taken care of too, and I was at the Continental Airlines boarding area by 10.25 and they had just begun boarding. That was a sigh of relief. But the sigh of relief soon turned into “Oh ! No !” as I saw the aircraft. It was a turbo prop, a Beech 1900 D to be precise. It is one of those aircrafts that you have to walk across the tarmac, keep long hair tucked to be saved from being sucked in by the prop and crouch to get in. It really freaked me out. You can see from the pictures as to how wide the aircraft is. It is an aircraft with no flight attendants. The first officer is responsible for those duties. It was the first time in many years of flying that I actually took time to read the safety evacuation procedure on the aircraft and how to operate the emergency doors. The plane was so small that the pilot did not care to even close the doors to the cockpit. I was thinking he might just use his loud voice to tell us what was going on, and maybe even toss peanuts from within to all passengers (7 of us to be precise). Things get really ugly from here on now. The flight takes off and I get a sick feeling in the stomach. I did not have a death wish that day, but it was scary to say the least. These turbo props can only fly at altitudes of 15000 ft or so, and that meant we could not fly above the storms but had to either go around it or through it. Most of the time we stayed away from it, but during the not-so-lucky times, we would drop some 6-8 feet vertically and cling on to the seats in front of us. It was no joy ride. The title of this post tells you the story. I got off the aircraft 56 minutes later and unable to walk straight. I have a high threshold for motion sickness, but it had been exceeded. I just came home at noon, fell asleep and did not wake up for 2 hours. I was still dizzy when I did.

All in all, lesson learnt. Never ever fly a turbo prop in turbulent conditions. And if you can, never ever fly a turbo prop PERIOD