January 29th, 954pm: Flight was cancelled. Horrific accident at DCA where a commercial jet collided with a military Black Hawk helicopter. American Airlines tells me that no flights are leaving BWI and my flight to Miami is cancelled in the morning. Best they can do is a flight on February 2nd. I rebook through Philly.
January 30th, 4:47am: we left the house at 1:45am. Stopped to wash the salt off the car before leaving it at the Philly airport garage. I don’t know the abbreviation or call sign or whatever they call it. The news says 32 bodies were found so far at the search happening at the Potomac. Really awful.
6:28am: The man in the window seat is at the tail end of doing the sign of the cross hand gesture. I lost my ticket, might have thrown it away with the cellophane of my KN95. I had to install the AA app to show my QR. Haven’t checked the news feed for updates but turbulence keeps me wondering what happened. I’d rather be sleeping like my companion who is wrapped on my arm, my hand holding her in place at the thigh.
9:55am: sitting at gate D53 at MIA. Short, young fella is standing too close. Twice I glance at him and he is intently focused over my head. I check what it is and he is staring at a Departures monitor. “These kids will stare at any damn screen” I think as I look back at my phone. The irony reminding me I’m journaling. My lady informs me of another something “you see this?”. A human has what looks like a neck pillow but that is 6 feet long and wrapped around their torso, neck, and entire head. Like the Q-anon Kraken actually existed as a plush toy and murked this goon. That flight was struck by the Black Hawk, no survivors expected, champion figure skaters were passengers. Mr. President wants to know why air traffic control did not order the Black Hawk to change direction.
1:11pm: floating above the clouds over Puerto Rico. They just announced that we will be arriving in 35 minutes. I always hope they won’t, but they did. They pitched their credit card for a good 90 seconds. I hope that isn’t what those people went through in their last few moments before terror and death, contemplating if frequent flyer miles are worth 28% APR and bam. It’s a horrible thought, and I’m not making light, it’s all terrible. The bathroom has a sign “do not flush while seated on toilet”. That thing would probably rip your tonsils out straight through your asshole in 3 seconds if you were to ignore the warning. I know it’s a warning because it didn’t say “Please” first. I think most people tune these things out, I bet people are nearly getting their butts forcibly removed 30 times a day on these flights and it never happens. I bet most people don’t even hear the credit card pitch. I wish I was like that with turbulence and unexpected dips in elevation.
I hope those people never saw it coming… 🙏🏻
7:16pm (1 hour ahead of home now) Hotel room. Landed. Took a wild ride around Tortola. Had dinner with a red snapper in some special Mayo sauce. Caught an extra beer at the hotel bar tried their world famous conch fritters which were something other than advertised. One of my favorite people calls unexpectedly. Unfortunately we don’t speak often enough so he either calls with great or horrible news.
Someone we grew up with perished on that flight.
It’s amazing the difference between an abstract people died post and someone in that group of people is someone I know. There is more sting to it. Real heartache.
My immediate thought is I am running on an hour of sleep and have been in strange places all day and this post was strange and sort of callous but also honest as I wrote. I’d rather just delete the whole thing than post thus but I deserve to have to read this later and think about it.
It’s been a day. RIP Chris.