74. PANIC ATTACK!

PANIC ATTACK!

30^th Aug 2013 2200Hrs

The flight EY0279 (call sign ETD279) has just disappeared from the live flight radar screen.  All of us had watched this AIRBUS A320 taking off at 2025hrs from Malé International Airport and climbing at 2000fpm on the live flight radar on the laptop screen. Once the aircraft gained 40000ft, we disconnected the data connection and went to have dinner as this was a 04 hour 15 minute flight to Abu Dhabi which is 3025 kilometers away.

We had dinner watching another episode of 'Burn Notice' as we do these days and returned to check the progress of the flight. I woke the laptop up, switched the data connection on and refreshed the page as the session had expired. 

Amazingly there was no trace of it! 

Then I  typed  ETD279 in the the search box of www.flightradar24.com  website and hit enter. 

Still no result would return.

Then I  zoomed in and checked all the flights on the flight path. Still no sign of ETD279. As there were over  eight thousand flights in the sky that night I used the filter to make only Etihad flights visible on the screen and checked each flight separately.

Still, it was missing.

I didn’t show my panic but sensed that both the other members of our family were very worried. Then I went to the Etihad’s official site and searched for the plane.

There were no updates. 
  

Then I Googled for similar live flight radar programs and searched again only to find that the flight that took off one and half hours ago, with our daughter on board, did not exist.  

I suppressed the sudden desire to turn on to a news channel to check out the Breaking News simply because I didn’t want my wife and my son to freak out.  I also tried to forget about the site that Ishara Gunawardene had said in a comment where one could get updates of the air crashes.

None of us were disclosing our true feelings to each other. We decided to go to bed declaring these flight radar programs could be very unstable, unreliable and malfunctioning any time.

Sleep didn’t come easily and I tossed and turned in bed.  Most of this flight path was over the sea, the Indian Ocean.  And to make it worse, it was a night flight. While we are lying in bed, we don’t know if she was trying to stay afloat among the debris in a cold stormy sea, in the pitch dark, thinking about us. Well that was if she was alive. And the sharks! And several tons of jet fuel floating on the sea waiting to ignite…

Did they have a chance to put on the life jackets, or was it so sudden? Bad weather was a major contributor to majority of the air crashes. And human error. All the episodes of Air Crash Investigations began to replay in front of my eyes. Once a masking tape pasted over the altitude sensor during maintenance work,  crashed a plane. Another time the pilot misread the imperial and metric units and ran out of fuel in midair. Faulty doors, reconditioned parts, metal fatigue, stuck controls, fire in the AC ducts, oops, possibilities are endless!

Was it an irony that I felt like completing the last page of her passport with my details, to be notified in case of death or accident, just before her departure this time?

I felt so guilty to sleep, to be home and dry while my kid could be fighting for life.

Or did they discover something was wrong and return to Malé for and emergency landing?

All this started, when she came to Maldives from Russia to spend her summer vacation with us. 

  

Friday the 5^th July. 1450Hrs:

I was there watching the LCD displays of the ARRIVALS lounge at Malé International Airport.  ETA of her connecting flight, Etihad EY278 was 1455 hrs. There were five minutes more. The sky was cloudy and the weather wasn’t so good. Suddenly it started to rain heavily.

The display showed 1455 and the flight didn’t land. I was getting worried. 

The problem with me is I always get worked up unnecessarily. 

Then to my immense relief, the word LANDED started flashing against her flight.

After a long delay at the customs she appeared in the doorway pushing her luggage trolley.

She had flown from Moscow to Abu Dhabi and after a long wait as a transit passenger flown the rest of the way from Abu Dhabi to Malé. 

While we were walking out pushing the trolley, she paused to check the SMS she just received. It was from her friends. “We saw you landing.” It said. They had watched her landing on the live flight radar.

We reached our island several days later as the final leg of our journey was by sea on a ferry which took 13 hours. 

And the rest of the vacation was a blur. 

As all the good things has to come to an end, the vacation just slipped through our fingers. It was time for her to go back. 

30^th Aug 2013 

This time we chartered a speed boat and took her to our domestic airport to catch the small domestic flight which would take her to Malé International Airport. We waited till the small De Havilland Dash 8 aircraft with her on board took off and disappeared into the blue sky.  As we sped back across the rough sea in the speedboat,  we found our hearts heavy. We had got off at the jetty and were riding  in a taxi when she called and said she landed at Malé International Airport. She had arrived several hours early so that she could check in without a rush. The night flight EY 0279 would take her to Abu Dhabi where she would be in transit before she boards flight EY 0069 to Domodedovo Airport in Moscow.

We watched this AIRBUS A320 taking off at 2025hrs from Malé International Airport and climbing at 2000fpm on the live flight radar on the laptop screen. 

And this is the flight that went missing.

31^st Aug 2013. Early morning: 

I was drifting between wakefulness and sleep. Suddenly, I found myself wide awake at about 4.00 AM. I immediately opened my laptop that was sitting on the bedside table and booted up. Before anything, I opened Yahoo Mail. Yahoo Messenger notification popped up and  informed me of a new mail in the inbox. I was praying that mail to be from her. I couldn't wait  for the mail to load. And finally the inbox appeared. Yeah! A Letter from Her.

"Arrived safely in Abu Dhabi:

got the food coupon too. got a sheet too.now found a nice place to stay.took everything from the flight. didn't leave anything behind angels. going to set many alarms don't worry. i will send a message when i go to Moscow. dont worry ok. will send another mail  if net works before i go. gave rice in  the flight.  ate and  very full now. brought the biscuits and things in the bag.

dont worry and jump up. im fine ok

I was so relieved I jumped with joy and woke up both wife and son to break the good news. It is an awesome thing to be able to wake up someone and tell something good. The rest of the night (or morning) we slept peacefully, feeling at the top of the world. 

  31^st Aug 2013. 0700Hrs

In the morning while she was still waiting in Abu Dhabi airport for her Moscow flight, I checked the live flight radar program and checked the situation. Though I didn’t notice the previous night, there were a number of flights with missing for status in the list of flights airborne at the moment. It was normal for a flight to be missing from the program and there was nothing to be alarmed about that.

By 0845 hrs she had boarded the Moscow flight for her 3707km 5 hour 25 minute journey. We zoomed into the runway and watched the aircraft take off from runway 2121 and climb. We returned to normal household chore after the flight leveled off at the cruising altitude. Now not worried any more about the sudden disappearance of flights from the radar screen.

At 1400Hrs we checked the progress and located the EY0069 (ETD69) approaching Moscow DOMODEDOVO Airport for landing. As soon as the plane touched down and slowed up my phone got the SMS,

“Angels, landed in Moscow just now. Still in the aircraft. Taking all the hand luggage. Don’t worry."

We stopped worrying.   

The eagle has landed.

And what was once shared on my son’s Facebook page brought a smile to my lips.

PS: This is not a story about aviation, 

but parenting.