By David Laventhol
We were fifteen minutes into our flight from Burbank to New York when the captain first indicated we had a problem. The front landing-gear light wouldn’t go off, which meant most likely that the gear was stuck in the down position. He would let us know when he found out what the problem was.
The calm, knowledgeable tone of the captain’s report was reassuring, and I went back to checking out the thirty-six channels of live TV that jetBlue provides on a small screen at each seat. But the reports soon became much less reassuring. We were going to do a flyover at nearby Long Beach Airport to determine whether the landing gear was indeed down. It was, and more serious trouble, it was twisted at a ninety-degree angle. That could make a landing highly dangerous, and was making the passengers, at least this one, extremely anxious.
The plane began to circle the region to burn off fuel. I went back to watching TV, which seemed to be showing some version of Airport.
Wait a minute. It wasn’t a movie, it was our plane, and we were in it. You could even see the stuck landing gear. I looked around — most of the other passengers were also watching themselves. This was reality TV carried to its ultimate. And we were the participants.
Yet somehow the fact that I was watching television calmed me down. This was real life, but it was also television. I’ve seen catastrophe before but always through the televised image. The catastrophes were real — like the one in New Orleans just recently — but the image, the experience, was indistinguishable from the same event in a made-for-TV movie or crime series. Television would go on to the next show or news broadcast and we would go on with our lives. Not really, not this time. Even as I was wondering whether the pilot would let us watch as our fate approached, he cut off the television.
Now there was no time for reflection. We concentrated on our landing instructions, identifying which side exit we should use and readying to jump on an evacuation slide if need be. People and luggage were shifted to the back so the rear wheels would hit the ground first.
Then the captain said the familiar, “Flight attendants prepare the cabin for landing.” There was nervous laughter. One minute from landing we went into the “brace” position, heads down between our legs. The flight attendants began repeating “brace,” “brace,” “brace” in what seemed like a final, ritualistic mantra. There was a long pause and then the sound of the rear wheels dropping. Then, as if it were any other landing, the front wheel touched gently down, the plane stopped, and the wild cheering began.
A few minutes later, now instant celebrities, we were greeted by the mayor, hundreds of McDonald’s cheeseburgers, and dozens of TV and print reporters — this was reality. The ratings for our show, we were told, had been stellar.
Even so, I don’t think I’ll be back for next week’s episode.
David Laventhol is a former publisher and editorial director of CJR..
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