The ALAG team photo- taken before we left for the airport...
I have a reputation.
A reputation for travel stories, that is... Weird things happen to me when I travel. Things like moped accidents in Rome (two in one day!) or missing a flight connection due to special customs screening (on the way home from our first trip to Tanzania) or switching carry on bags with a fellow passenger in Amsterdam (our second trip to Tanzania). There is even a name for this phenomenon...
"LeeAnn stories"
I was pretty determined to avoid an LeeAnn story this time. Especially since our team from ALAG was going to be traveling with others (whom we were meeting for the first time!) from Sacramento and North Carolina. Fortunately, nothing happened to me personally- but we did have a couple of odd things happen to our team as we traveled...
Our first flight was a red-eye to New York. A couple hours into the flight there was a jolt- it was like turbulence, but with only one bump. About 10 minutes later the pilot comes on the intercom and says something along the lines of "In case you were wondering about that bump back there, folks, that was not turbulence it was wake turbulence." In other words- we passed through another plane's jet wash.
Jet wash? Like in Top Gun?!! Great... I felt a lot better when I thought it was just regular turbulence- thanks for clearing that up!
Photo taken of Dubai City as we landed. The tall building is the Burj Dubai, currently under construction- when complete, it will be the tallest man-made structure in the world.
The second, unusual event occurred on the 5 hour long, return flight from Dar es Salaam to Dubai. On this flight our team of 15 people were scattered around the aircraft, seated in groups of 2 or 3. About an hour before landing, a member of our team, D, came by my seat and asked me to pray for another team member, P. It seems that P was having some anxiety because someone on our flight had tried to open the plane's hatch at 32,000 feet! It turns out that D had witnessed the event and had ID'd the attempted-hatch-opener (AHO) to the crew after they investigated the door due to a warning light that was prompted by removing the door handle's cover. The crew quietly moved the AHO to the rear of the plane and isolated her until we landed.
We landed in Dubai under emergency protocol- they landed the plane far out on the runway, away from the terminal, and took us off the plane there. D and P had to remain behind to give a statement to the local police and the AHO was taken into custody (her story was that she was looking for the bathroom). D and P caught up with us later inside the terminal in plenty of time for us to catch the next leg of our flight to New York.
So like I said- no personal LeeAnn story this trip. I was kind enough to share my moments with the whole team...
Anyone want to take a trip with me?
-LeeAnn
Post-script... When we came home, I asked a friend (who happens to also be a flight attendant) about both incidents. She said that the AHO would not have been able to open the door, due to external pressure outside the plane. Good to know, but it was a little unnerving, nonetheless! As far as the wake turbulence was concerned- evidently that is not that unusual and is not dangerous... It's just unusual that the pilot mentioned it over the intercom...
