Sylvia's Journal

We took off from Kabul airport in the rain and clouds. The Hindu Kush mountain range forms a bowl with Kabul at the bottom. It wasn’t great weather for flying but also nothing unusual for the pilots of the UN flight who shuttle between Dubai and Kabul year in year out (since 2002) several times a week. I thought a lot about my three colleagues who perished in a Kam Air plane that flew into the mountains as it approached Kabul, three years ago. I am acutely aware of the risks of flying in bad weather in the mountains. But I am also acutely aware of the thorough training that pilots receive and that dealing with emergencies is a big part of their training. So I settled in my seat with the intent to sleep all the way to Dubai. Little did I know that we were to need the pilot’s experience very soon.

Suddenly the plane started to shudder and bank first left then right, then left again. I felt the plane’s nose going down and I could sense that we were losing speed and altitude. The view from the window was solid white; we were still in the clouds. A loud roar coming from the back accompanied the shaking and banking of the plane. I don’t think I have ever prayed that hard in my life. I later understood from a veteran pilot sitting across the aisle that the plane went into a stall on its climbout over the mountain. In July my plane went into a stall which makes it uncontrollable and we crashed. Now we were over high mountains. Taking the nose down is only possible if you have enough clearance. I had no idea whether we did.

In my little Piper Warrior I had to practice stalls all the time and learn what to do. It is very simple, you put the nose down and gain enough speed to produce the necessary lift so you can pick up speed again and climb out. It becomes problematic when you cannot put the nose down. This happened in July. We were lucky to crash in a pond. I have never in my 30 years of flying around the world experienced a stall in a big jet. I knew that if our altitude was too low to clear the mountain we would not survive this stall. The passengers were all looking at each other in great fright and I kept thinking about Carmen, Cristy and Amy, wondering whether it had been like that during the final last minutes of their doomed flight. My body was preparing for a calamity (the body knows), with a surge of adrenaline and a fast heartbeat. It was nothing like the serenity of my last fall out of the sky. I wondered, would I be lucky, again, this time or would this be another one of those early morning calls to Jono, his third.

The whole thing lasted only a few minutes but it felt like an eternity. We saw the flight crew run to the back, I smelt gasoline and wondered wether the plane was dumping its fuel for an emergency landing (where? I wondered). And then the crew returned from the back of the plane with two thumbs up and smiles on their faces. From the hard to hear explanation over the intercom I heard something about ice and windsheer, a potentially fatal combination. Later the second pilot made the rounds, shaking hands with us. I asked him what really happened and that is when I found out that we just escaped what may well have been the same scenario that killed our three sisters. As the plane was climbing to clear the top of a mountain, wind surged over the mountain top and pushed the nose down; trying to bring it back up caused the stall. As I am writing this I realize how close a call it had been and that it was much worse than I had thought. In aviation this event is called an ‘incident’ which requires investigation. Why did the plane go in a stall and why was there so little clearance. The veteran pilot across the aisle who flies for USAID in Afghanistan is going to find out.

Although the second pilot, a Ghanaian, claimed that God, not the pilot had saved us, I knew that the pilot’s experience and strength to hold the controls, was an important part of our narrow escape.

Later I was asked to fill in a standard customer survey questionnaire about cleanliness and politeness of the crew and all that. I put a big line through the whole thing and wrote in the comment section that none of that actually mattered; the only thing that did matter today was the pilot’s skill and whether the aircraft was airworthy. That is really all I want from an airline. It is amazing how quick your priorities change. I learned that in July and I am reminded of it again.

The passengers bonded instantly as we recovered from our scare. In front of me sat an Ethiopian looking gentleman. I ask him if I had identified him correctly and the answer was yes. He was a USAID IT contractor from Ethiopia who was on his way home. I might see him in two weeks. When you have been scared to death together, you become instant friends.

With the adrenaline still coursing through my body I could no longer sleep and all my tiredness was gone. So I wrote; it helped to get some of the fright out of my system. Going to a hot flat place suddenly felt very attractive. And then there is that thought…. that someone is watching over me.

I shared a taxi to my hotel with two Brits, one military and one carpenter. Neither one had realized that we had just had a very close call. The military guy was not perturbed the way I was. I guess death is a professional hazard for him. The British taxpayer paid for the ride.