We were several hours into the AirFrance-operated flight from Paris, nearing our destination, Cairo, and I was almost finished with the bad movie I had been watching when the plane lost some of its electrical power, causing all entertainment systems to go black, and the pilot experienced what we would later learn was an “incident in the cockpit” and may have smelled smoke. The plane was being diverted to Athens and we passengers were left to wonder if we were about to go through an emergency landing.
First, let me explain the bad movie part.
I purposely choose bad movies for my in-flight entertainment because I prefer to save good movies, or ones whose release we’ve been anticipating, to watch together at home, on land and with a larger screen and surround sound. I should mention that sometimes I accidentally choose a movie that turns out to be pretty good. On a flight home from Venice in October I watched “Sinners,” which had a synopsis describing vampires, usually code for B-moviedom, and liked it very much. (Indeed, “Sinners” is nominated for Best Movie at next month’s Academy Awards presentation.) And it was during several flights that I discovered the “John Wick” series, movies we would never watch at home, but they make me laugh with their over-the-top, totally unrealistic violence sequences.
But this movie, the inexplicably titled “Weapons,” was particularly odious. It involved the mysterious disappearance of children from the same classroom of a small-town school. The bigger mystery is how such good actors as Julia Garner and Josh Brolin got tricked into starring in such a turd.
And now the screen in front of me was black and I was left to wonder if this would be the last movie I would ever see.
I’m only being slightly hyperbolic. There was no panic, at least not in the front of the plane where we were seated. But there was concern, and more than a few fellow passengers admitted to being afraid. The lighting in the cabin still worked, but the power was lost to the lie-flat seats in business class, and flight attendants were going seat to seat and manually returning them to the upright position. Seated not far away from me was a man in a pilot’s uniform – I would learn later that he was to be the pilot on the return trip from Cairo to Paris. I saw one of the flight attendants peek through the closed curtains at the service station and quietly indicated to the man that he should come up front.
The crew, however, offered no explanations to us nor did they give further details about the situation, including answering a question many of us had: Will the landing gear work? “We think so,” is all they could say.
The only thing we heard from the pilot was that we were turning around to land at Athens because protocol required that the plane divert to the airport that was closest when “the incident” occurred.
That brought a puzzled look to another nearby passenger. I asked him what he was thinking. He said he was from Egypt, though he had been living in Ohio for three decades, and made the trip to Cairo several times a year. “I know we were about to land in Cairo,” he said.
Later we would find out that he was right. We were only 10 minutes from beginning the descent into the Cairo airport. So why were we going to Athens?
There were several reasons, but the two main ones were: Athens could better handle an emergency landing if we had to make one; and Athens had the maintenance crew that could possibly address the problem.
I should mention that this was all happening in the early morning hours. Our scheduled landing time in Cairo was 2:30 a.m. And many of us had spent more than six hours in a layover at Charles DeGaulle.
You’ve probably guessed now that we landed safely. It was a relief to hear the landing gear whir into position and gratifying to feel the bump of the wheels hitting the runway. But sobering to see the emergency vehicles with flashing lights lining the runway.
Steps were brought out to the plane and we were loaded into buses that took us to the nearly-deserted terminal. One passenger fainted as we stood in line to go through Greece’s passport control. We were told to go to baggage claim area and wait for further instructions. After more than an hour we knew we would not be getting back on the plane. Both the flight and cabin crews had “timed out.” They all passed us one their way out of the airport, again offering no information. The last official thing we heard from anyone at AirFrance was, “Fasten your seatbelts.”
I had booked the flights through Delta, so I called the U.S. 800 number. Thirty minutes later an agent there said that it looked as though we would be put on a flight to Cairo at around 3:30 in the afternoon. What happened between now and then she couldn’t tell me. No one could.
Some time later there was a buzz among the passengers, all still waiting for luggage. A representative for a third-party company with Athens’ airport – still nothing from AirFrance – was telling small groups that the luggage would be coming out soon and once it had been collected, we were to go to the second level and find this company’s service window where we would be given further instructions.
Rick and I were lucky – our luggage came out fairly quickly, and once we got to the second level and found the service window, we were seventh in line. Two workers were handwriting instructions, which included the name of a hotel in Athens (but not the address), and what time we were to be back at the airport for the afternoon flight. By the time we had gotten our instructions, the line was more than 50 people long.
Miraculously, there were several cabs waiting at the taxi stand. I Googled the address of the hotel we were assigned to and showed it to our driver; he nodded and started off. His driving was erratic and we both thought he may have been intoxicated. His English was a good as our Greek but we kept trying to make conversation just to keep him from nodding off. I love irony as much as anyone, but surviving a questionable plane landing only to be killed in a traffic accident on an Athens freeway was too much. The trip was more than 35 minutes long.
We made it to the hotel at around 4:30 a.m., got checked in and set our alarms to be up and out at the taxi stand before 11 a.m. Despite the fatigue, I barely slept, and in the morning was surprised to see the Acropolis when I opened the curtains. We were suddently Accidental Tourists.
The wait to get through passport control was nearly two hours – another person fainted in line – but we made it through and on to our 3:15 flight (which didn’t leave until after 4 p.m.) and completed our very long, much too exciting trip to Cairo. On the flight, I loaded up the movie I had been watching before all the hoopla began. I fast-forwarded to where I had been interrupted and finished it. God was it awful.
