Aeropain


Somewhere over northern Germany the large scottish man wearing a t-shirt saying 'nae neck' opened the aeroplane's toilet door, grimaced, and turned back to his group of mates and said

'Jaysus, it stinks of burning plastic in here!'

The stag party laughed. But then the cabin began filling with the smell of cooking electronics. When our pilot spoke through the intercom, we could hear that they were using a respirator. We were told that we had to make an emergency landing. People started making birdlike noises of concern. A quick descent and we bumped into Cologne airport, where an armada of fire engines raced to meet us. Sheparded inside, we sat and waited. Of course, they could find no fault, but we could not fly on. It was a day of two halves. After 5 hours of waiting, we were taken by taxi to Dusseldorf to be put up in a luxurious hotel for the night, with all meals paid for, before finally flying home the next afternoon.

4 comments:

Brit said...

Good lord. That can't have been nice. I've never had an 'incident' on a flight...not fun.

worm said...

do you know what, I genuinely wasn't scared at all. The fraulein was pretty white-knuckled though. Had a few weird plane flights in my time, including once in africa where we had to fly in a de-pressurised plane because some police snipers had shot a hole in the windscreen whilst getting rid of an eritrean hijacker on the plane the day before.

Gareth Williams said...

I like your Africa plane story very much. Plenty of local colour.

Welcome back! I hope your steins were chilled.

Susan said...

Curiously dramatic - glad you got back safely - we missed you! Love your expression 'birdlike noises of concern' - might have been useful to have wings..