Turbulence!

Hiya, Melissa here…..

Many of our blogs are directed at the those who wish to be sitting at the pointy end of the aircraft, but so much more happens on an aircraft.

It’s all very well when a pilot says the turbulence wasn’t bad, they have no idea of the potential carnage in the cabin! Unlike the tech crew, who wear five point harnesses throughout the flight, Flight Attendants are roaming around the cabin untethered - and they are carrying scalding fluids in between tightly packed passengers 😬. Here’s a story from my time as a Flight Attendant - long before Occupational Health and Safety laws applied to us.

This is dedicated to all those Flight Attendants and passengers who have ever experienced BAD Turbulence over New Zealand.

The first thing I learnt as a Flight Attendant is that nothing can be taken for granted and that the next 30 seconds of your life can be far from what you expected it to be. It was this unpredictability that had me drawn like a moth to a flame. I absolutely loved going to work as every day would hold a surprise or two. It’s a story, not an article so grab a coffee and a muffin. Put your feet up!

Oooh… this was a long time ago…. about 1988

My roster incorporated both Domestic and International flying and I was trained to crew three different aircraft types. Domestic work could have me crewing a Fokker Friendship F27 to provincial towns as sole Flight Attendant or on a Boeing B737 to the larger centres with a crew compliment of three or four dependant on service.

International duties could be on B737’s with four crew to the smaller of the Pacific nations, or, flying on a much larger B767 with a crew of eight.

On the B767 we would fly to Australia or to much further flung Pacific nations such as Tahiti. I could be away from home for as little as four hours with a single Auckland, Wellington, Auckland duty or away for as long as five days island hopping around the Pacific.

The basic pay wasn’t flash. In 1987 I started on only $16,000. But what we didn’t get paid in taxable income we made up for in non-taxable income. At the time, my bring-home pay exceeded that of my husband.

I had fallen on my feet in this job and every duty brought some form of interest, delight or thought provoking incident.

My working environment was at the mercy of the weather and air currents, as well as technical and catering requirements and in the confines of a small cabin, the most unpredictable element of all were the passengers we were there to take care of.

Just as we were called flight deck floozies, trolley dollies, kitchen bitches and cart tarts, the passengers were the self loading cargo, most of whom were stacked in cattle class. But the most good- humoured ridicule was left for the poor blokes up the front, the pilots – more formally known as the Tech crew - a.k.a God.

‘What is the difference between God and a pilot?’

‘God doesn’t think he is a pilot!’

The Tech crew worked a different roster to us and were only certified on one aircraft type at a time, so although we shared the same aircraft for a flight, there were effectively two teams on board. Divided by skill, pay, roster, aircraft type, a sturdy closed door and of course – gender. Despite all the potential for disharmony between the two crews, most cabin and tech crew got on very well.

New Zealand is a long and narrow country which lies predominately on a north/south axis. It’s such a shame that the majority of our weather and winds come from the west. The country lies between 31 and 47 degrees latitude south and sits squarely within the ‘Roaring Forties’. These trade winds blow around the globe pretty much unhindered until they encounter the high mountains of our beautiful land.

Suddenly these strong winds are spoiled by the jagged peaks thrusting up from the land nearly four kilometres into the atmosphere and to the east of these mountains the air currents are distorted, thrown into disarray and behave just like water in a washing machine. The air is tremulous at best and downright destructive at its worst. It just happens that virtually every single airport in New Zealand lies to the east of the mountains, and you need to fly over the mountains to get to those that don’t. As a consequence, New Zealand has some of the most challenging flying conditions in the world and nary a day went by without turbulence making itself felt on some flight or other.

Turbulence develops for a variety of reasons - the ground is too warm, the air is too cold, the winds are too strong, the clouds are too active or even – for no reason at all. Some of the worst turbulence is simply not predictable and it is as if a great hole has opened up in the atmosphere and the plane plunges, without any warning, right into it. It is for this reason alone that passengers are always requested to keep their seat belts fastened. People die from injuries caused by sudden turbulence because they are sent flying at great velocity around the cabin if they are not seat-belted in.

In the very early days of flying, it took me some time to get my air legs and learn to walk as gracefully down a cabin aisle as I did in the terminal. Like all new cabin crew, I reeled and staggered like a drunkard as I tottered down the aisle with hot liquids or glass bottles of wine or carried trays of hot food. The passengers seemed always to be seconds away from disaster as the new crew learnt to keep their balance on the constantly moving platform of an aircraft in flight. The floor was always at a certain pitch and vibrated constantly. Introduce the unpredictable turbulence and your guess was good as mine as to whether I was going to make it the length of the plane without falling into the lap of some poor unsuspecting businessman.

However, as with all skills, practice makes perfect and soon I was as confident on a wildly bucking floor as I was on the firm and motionless terminal floor. Even in heels!

Less than a year after starting flying, I was exposed to some incredibly violent storm conditions when in March 1988, Cyclone Bola hit the east of the North Island.

The storm hit a day before a scheduled strike by air traffic controllers and I had been advised by flight operations that my rostered overnight duty into Napier would be extended by at least one more night. What a bonus! Two nights in Napier – on paid work time!

For real airline flying excitement, nothing beat my beloved Fokker - the F27!

We departed Auckland in the late afternoon. As the flight was on an F27, I was the sole Flight Attendant. I knew we could have bad weather enroute as the little F27 flew below 15,000 feet as it wasn’t equipped with oxygen for the passengers. We also had to traverse the high ground to the west of Napier. I ended up ‘hanging in my straps’ for most of the trip – in other words, the weather was so bad that I had to remain seated in my four point harness as the little Fokker plunged and gyrated it’s determined way through the dark and boisterous clouds of a tropical storm depleting itself over land.

The passengers were decidedly quiet when we landed into Napier, but I had thoroughly enjoyed myself, as had the pilots.

It was a lovely evening knowing as we did that we could sleep in the next morning. We went out as a group, the tech crew and I, and over a leisurely dinner whilst the storm beat against the windows, we decided to hire a car the next day and drive to Wairoa to see the damage the storm had inflicted upon the small East coast town. Their one and only road bridge had been swept away during the height of the storm. It would be an interesting way to spend the day.

The next day dawned sunny but quite windy and I went down to breakfast where I met the tech crew. We were just tucking into a decent helping of bacon and eggs when the manager of the hotel delivered a note to the captain. We looked on suspiciously as he opened it and we could guess the contents. It had been too good to be true. We weren’t to spend another night in Napier. The air traffic controllers had called off their strike and with them back on deck there were no reasons for planes not to fly, even thought Cyclone Bola was still going nuts down the eastern seaboard. We all wished we had agreed to meet an hour earlier as we would have been long gone before the message came through to us. These were the days before emails and cell phones.

At the airport, we found we were not going back to Auckland as we had assumed but we were simply going to position the empty Fokker down to Wellington. So, with no passengers on board we lifted off into the windy conditions bound for Wellington.

What a novelty, not having passengers on the empty plane. I still had to sit in my crew seat for take-off and landing but for the whole flight I sat on the flight deck and chatted with the crew. We seemed to be following the tail of the cyclone south and as we got into the thick of it, the weather turned really quite nasty. It was evident that landing into Wellington was going to be bit of a trial. The airport is notorious for its dismally short runway situated between two stretches of sea and horrendously affected by the storm force winds that rake across the Cook Strait.

As the weather grew progressively worse, the tech crew were too preoccupied with flying the plane to really want me there, so I retreated down the back to my crew seat.

I had secured the cockpit door open so I could see what was happening on the flight deck.  Despite the cabin lighting being on, the density of the swirling cloud allowed no light to enter the cabin and it was very dark.

The boys were having a hard time of it and on my own down the back I silently reviewed my emergency procedures should things turn to custard. I visually checked from my seat the locations of my torch, first aid kit and fire extinguisher. I went over in my mind the method of opening the main door right next to me and how to open the window exits.

The door howled next to me as the pressure came off inside the cabin and the winds buffeted the little aircraft violently around. Effectively, with no cargo or passengers, we were like a feather tossed in the storm.

I could hear the intermittent hail on the fuselage and the engines surging from time to time in the threatening darkness outside. It was only 4.00pm but the day was as night.

I sat there with my hands clasped in my lap and I watched quietly as the tech crew physically wrestled with the plane and the conditions. The view out of the flight deck window was of no reassurance as they could see no more than I could.

The landing gear was lowered, and we began our final approach to the north. That meant we were out in the Cook Strait – one of the most treacherous stretches of water in the world - and we were being pummeled by the storm conditions with no protection from the land.

Bit by bit the view out of the flight deck windscreen began to clear as the low cloud gave way to sheets of wind blown rain. We could see the approach lights for the airport and runway but as the little aircraft swung and was tossed in the winds, we could also see a lot more things too, foamy seas crashing on the rocks and a city battened down to weather the storm.

We were seldom in horizontal flight as first one wing then the other dropped and the fuselage twisted as great gusts hit the tail. The tech crew continued their approach and judging by the sweat rings developing under their arms, this was an approach quite out of the ordinary. I wasn’t scared but all my senses were on high alert. My body was sensing every judder and lurch and my ears were tuned in to the drone of the engines.

I sat there waiting, waiting for the wheels to find the tarmac. I felt as though I was in a washing machine and it grew increasingly harder to be sure where ‘up’ was. Eventually we thumped onto the deck and the engines roared as they slowed the aircraft down. With only three people on the aircraft, the relief of being on terra firma was still palpable in the aircraft.

Although the airport remained open for the rest of the evening, very few aircraft made it in. Several did overshoots, meaning they were on approach and prepared to land but it was just too unsafe, and they applied full power and overshot the runway and pulled up to safety as if on take off. Most planes ended up diverting and Wellington was left without its overnight quota of aircraft to be able to send all flights out on time the next day.

Although we still had plenty of duty time up our sleeve, Wellington was keen to have the Fokker Friendship on the ground ready for a departure in the morning.

We were without a plane and no other landed that could take us back to Auckland, so we spent a second night at the company’s behest in a flash hotel.

We were left unassigned for a duty the following day and as an entire crew we simply passengered home to Auckland mid morning. What an unusual duty. Exciting flights but with no passengers on some sectors and the bad weather on others, it had combined to mean no work actually done by me. I had simply been along for the ride.

Turbulence was a common occurrence and if it struck suddenly, the crew who were walking about could get hurt and, on this occasion, it was me. The aircraft was the wee workhorse, the F27 so I was the sole hostie on board.

The weather had been quite windy along the western reaches of the North Island for a few days and the flight to New Plymouth had been bouncy but not too bad and I had managed the hot beverage service quite well. On the return sector to Auckland the bouncing was unchanged, and the flight was reasonably full. The flight time allowed me plenty of time to do the required service and I was careful when pouring the coffee or tea from the great jugs we carried, partly to prevent drips and also not to overfill the cups the passengers would be sipping from during the niggly jiggles.

Suddenly, the aircraft dropped from beneath my feet then just as fast the floor came up to meet me, causing my knees to buckle. I was falling with a hot pot of coffee and I twisted my body to avoid scalding the businessman whose coffee I had just poured. The coffee pot and I crashed to the floor, the jug spilling its hot aromatic contents down my skirt and across the carpet and as I hit the floor I heard and felt a tearing sound.

The pain in my side was intense and took my breath away. Instantly, several pairs of hands were holding me down as the thrashing of the plane continued for several more seconds and I looked up to see the ashen faces of passengers sitting in aisle seats. Their concern and alarm were touching but I had to get up and restore order. Moving, however was an agony, and I knelt in the aisle and gasped with pain. As I looked forward, the co pilot was looking at me in alarm from his seat and mouthing silently ‘Are you alright?’ I nodded and winced as I slowly got to my feet. My skirt was torn from waist to hem and was soaked with about 6 coffee cups of rapidly cooling liquid. I picked up the coffee pot but then let it go again as my right side protested the move. I tried again with my left hand and managed to retrieve the pot but instead of moving forward to the galley, I retreated with the pot to my crew seat. I could barely move or even breathe. I buckled in and called the tech crew on the intercom. I explained that I was injured, that I wasn’t bleeding but that I couldn’t move very well and breathing hurt, especially when I talked. The captain immediately understood the gravity of the situation - we had no crew cover if an emergency occurred on landing.

That wasn’t the most immediate problem, however. The passengers had their trays with them in the cabin and the galley was in disarray after the plummet. The captain told me to stay seated and he would make a P.A asking the passengers to place their trays on the floor as the in-flight service had been stopped ‘due to circumstances beyond our control’. The passengers knew what had happened and several leaned towards me to see if I needed anything. There was nothing to be done and I graciously declined their offers of help. They needed to be securely seat-belted just in case another hole opened up in the sky. The captain radioed through to Auckland Flight Operations and advised them that there was an injured crew member on board. This was not only to get help for me on landing but also to give the company time to find a replacement for me so that further flights that day would not be disrupted.

The landing was smooth and trouble free and as we taxied into the apron area by the terminal, I found a way to support my side so I could perform my post landing duties.

The pain made me feel sick when I moved but I had to, my seat was right by the passenger door and I had to get out the way and open the door.

I was relieved to see a Flight Attendant waiting right outside the door as I opened it and she quickly stepped on board to farewell and assist the passengers as I retreated to the far side of the entry way. She was there just for me and she got my crew things together and carried them for me as we made our way slowly to the terminal. I draped my great coat around me to provide some modesty from the torn skirt. I was flanked either side by two very concerned pilots who were worried that I might be seriously hurt as the turbulence had been particularly violent. I assured them I was ok – just hurting a lot.

A taxi was waiting for me and I was driven around to the airline doctor who saw me right away. I had torn my abdominal muscles in the fall as I tensed and turned. There was no treatment other than rest and painkillers. I was dispatched home in the taxi as driving was out of the question.

I missed three weeks of work, including a much coveted Coral Route duty which had us island hopping around the Pacific for a week. I was gutted as these duties only came up twice a year.