Last Sunday, after a wonderful weekend celebrating the wedding of two friends, I was sitting in the Southwest Airlines terminal at Indianapolis International Airport waiting to board a plane home. We had a little delay because of traffic in Boston. I was hungover and sleep-deprived from a wild and fun 36 hours, so my book would have fallen on my falling-asleep face had I tried to read even a paragraph. So I open up CNN to check the headlines. “Second disaster involving Boeing 737 Max 8 in months.” Wow. What are the odds that you hear about a majorly fatal plane crash just as you’re about to board a plane? With sadness, I read a bit about the tragedy, and was soon called to board.
Ian and I sit down in an aisle and middle seat (Southwest has you pick your seats when you get on the plane) and he falls asleep within seconds. He was in worse shape from the partying than I was, but he also can fall asleep anywhere. I will always envy him for that. I people-watch for a few minutes, chuckling at a woman who somehow got a bag strap caught on every single armrest she went by saying, “there’s got to be a better way to do this.” Next, I check out the reading material in the seat pouch in front of me. The top left corner of the plane’s safety instructions card was visible and poking out the top of the pouch. I could see “737-…” It caught my eye because of what I had just read on CNN. I pull the rest of the card out to reveal “…Max 8.” Not only am I somehow flying on the same day as a disaster, but I’m buckled in to a seat on the same exact type of plane that crashed into the ground that morning and also plunged into the ocean less than five months ago? As I sit there, the 737 Max 8 and its manufacturer, Boeing, are being called into question for safety.
I turned to Ian and said, “We have to get off this plane, like right now.” He wakes up groggily. “Huh??” “It crashed this morning and another time five months ago. We have to get off.” I wave the CNN article in his face. We talked for a minute and I talked to a couple family members and felt a little less anxious. I may have been overreacting. I was in the U.S. on a reputable airline. No one else was concerned. The flight attendants were cheerful and the pilots sounded confident we’d have a successful flight and a “nice tail-wind” that would make up for the delay, landing us in Boston on time.
Until we pushed back from the gate, I still felt uneasy. I still had the choice to abort this mission. Was the Max 8 going to turn out like the McDonnell Douglas DC-10, which was widely used and eventually deemed a “death trap” after so many fatal accidents? Wrestling with the choice to stay on or not was anxiety-provoking. Then we took off. There was no more choice. I held my breath when we hit six minutes in the air, which was when Ethiopian Airlines Max 8 went down that morning…and again at 16 minutes when the Lion Air Max 8 went down.
I have always loved flying. I’ve never ever been a nervous flier. In kindergarten, I wanted to be a commercial pilot. I worked for the Department of Transportation on aviation issues right after college, evaluating what are known as “runway incursions,” or near-misses on the runways and taxiways (it happens ALL THE TIME). I also contributed to the development of a tutorial on safety for airport surface workers. I’ve been in a big simulator. I was going to learn to fly in college, but the day of my first lesson was too windy and I never got back at it.
This flight on the Max 8 was the first time experiencing anxiety in the air. The lack of control feeling that people describe was prominent on Sunday. I had to do something to distract me from watching the clock and looking for the Boston skyline. I couldn’t get a drink—I was too hungover! I just kept reading and reading about this plane and the two crashes it had. I learned about the plane, which made me feel better. Irrationally and narcissistically, I thought that maybe I could remind the pilots about the procedure for cutting the power to the new software system called M.C.A.S. that Boeing installed in the Max 8. Knowledge is power, right?
I kept reading as we flew quietly and smoothly at 35,000 feet over rural New York. The Max 8 is so so quiet and smooth. I couldn’t imagine it going down. Nor could I imagine what anyone involved in a plane crash goes through in those last minutes. It’s so hard to even do the thought exercise of imagining yourself in plane crash. We landed as smooth as we had sailed in a sleeting, snow-blanketed Boston.
The global reaction to the crash is still evolving. More and more countries are now grounding the 737-Max 8 temporarily, but not the United States. Boeing maintains confidence in the safety of the Max 8. The F.A.A. says there’s no evidence to ground the plane. They are now standing alone in the world on this issue. Why? Are we simply better informed than all of those other countries? Or is the answer coming from a darker place where money and politics are at play? Should I have gotten on that plane? I don’t know. Would I get on a 737-Max 8 tomorrow? No.
