This blog entry is about flights that were made memorable by their potential for disasterous endings.
Snowstorms, and my arrivals and departures from Istanbul, seemed destined to be linked. In 2003, I had to watch from my balcony which, for good or for bad, overlooked Ataturk International Airport ... wringing my hands as I waited for the foot of snow to melt enough for me to fly out to New Zealand. If I missed my flight due to snow ... there was a mess of connections to recover, but the handwringing won out, and my Singapore Airlines flight prepared to taxi as they were melting the last of the ice on the runway.
I flew into summer in New Zealand, although Dunedin ... capricious little weather twin of Antwerpen, gifted me two out of ten days of sunshine. I left with about $25 NZ in my wallet, and no credit card. It had vanished in fairly mysterious circumstances, for which I now blame my Turkish kitten ... another story.
Courtesy of friends in Istanbul, I knew I was racing a snowstorm back. The city had already made preparations to close down ... my arrival window was a small one, since the flight from NZ to Turkey takes 23 hours of flight time, then there are stopover hours. $25 wasn't going to do much if I was stranded in Singapore, and although I had good travel insurance, I didn't want to know if it worked on a 'you send us the costs you incurred while waiting for your destination airport to open again' ...
I did it. The plane landed, I raced home, bought extra water, food ... I had money, it just couldn't be accessed outside Turkey. Finally, I fell on the bed, almost comatose. The snow started to fall heavily, as predicted and lo! the guy above me started lifting his floor tiles, one-by-one, with some kind of drill. Clearly he had his snowbound itinery. I spent another week in the apartment, just waiting for the big snowdrifts to thaw again.
I popped over to Belgium, January 2005. I thought I might die of the cold ... and mentioned it more than once, perhaps mockingly. It seemed bone-chilling, and I had flown in from Istanbul. How I complained ...
I was more than halfway into the flight back to Istanbul, when a weather report indicated that it might be snowing there. I stopped a hostess, and he said 'Oh yes, we're not sure we'll be able to land' so casually that I felt a little dramatic for thinking 'WELL CHRIST, WHAT DO WE DO IF WE CAN'T LAND???'
We circled Istanbul for some time, and I knew we were circling however, being a buttoned-up Kiwi, I was silently tense, keeping my fear to myself, trying not to think about how cold the Marmara Sea would be ... finally, we landed, and the spontaneous round of applause let me know that all those Turks had been pretty damn well buttoned up too.
The snow was so deep that we parked out on the runway, and buses came out to us. I do believe we were one of the last planes to land that day ... I never did find out where planes that fail to land go though.
The taxi driver who got me back through the city to Mecidiyekoy didn't actually allow any kind of calm to wash over me after my safe touchdown. No no no ... he was sweet, but his pessimism about whether we would actually reach home, was unsettling. He pointed out a number of slightly wrecked cars along the way, those that had slid on ice into the dividing barrier on the motorway ...
My money was about 5kms away, in the bank, through snowdrifts 2-3 feet deep, so I hunkered down, had another week off and ate the Belgian gift chocolates I bought home ... cleaning out the freezer, remembering, in time, to fill up spare bottles for when the water went off.
I was home.
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