How not to get on Ellen

The ill-fated U.S. Airways Flight 1549 that showboated into the Hudson River after taking off from LaGuardia Airport at 3:26 p.m. on Thursday, January 15 was a slightly too-close-for-comfort travel experience for my apparently fragile psyche. I was on the Delta flight scheduled to depart the very same runway at 4:45 p.m. Both of these flights, along with most others, had already been delayed because of that morning’s snow storm; so the departure schedules changed as time went along.

Suddenly, at 4:00 p.m. all flights on the Arrivals/Departures board showed “Delayed,” and a slightly shaky feminine voice came over the speakers saying something like, “due to an incident regarding a flight departing LaGuardia, all flights have been delayed until further notice. If you wish to cancel your flight and book alternatives, please see an agent.” That’s not an exact quote but close enough. A number of people lined up at the suddenly busy counters while I sat for a while contemplating my own strategy. My first idea was to just abandon ship and try to rebook my same flight the following day but I wanted to find out if I could retrieve my luggage first. I waited quite a while for the crowds around the counters to diminish and as I joined them I noticed that my particular flight no longer said “Delayed” but was flashing “Now Boarding,” so I reversed my direction and did just that. My flight left the gate at 4:45 p.m. and after doodling around the byways of outer LaGuardia for a while we took off without incident, not a honker in sight.

Until I landed at the airport in Ft. Lauderdale three hours later I had only an inkling of the enormity of what had just taken place. While still at Delta’s terminal in LGA I overheard several conversations between people who had gotten text-messages from friends and/or relatives; or at least from an outside source of some sort, that a plane had crashed in the Hudson River. I didn’t see or hear any details until my host and I returned to his home in Hollywood, FL and caught the drama on the tube. Wow, I realized then, that was a close call. Not a big deal really; just another real-life experience that I’m glad to have just missed.

After five days of bopping around Hollywood, Ft. Lauderdale and Tamarac, my flight home this Tuesday was perfection itself, as was my timely connection with the car service that picked me up at LGA and deposited me safely at home in Brooklyn. I didn’t even catch a cold bug this time. However, oddly enough, I’m now feeling some post-traumatic stress and I never even had the stress in the first place. Go figure on that one. I know it could have been me standing on that wing, but it wasn’t. But it also could have been me appearing on Ellen this morning and getting a free cruise on Celebrity (or maybe Carnival) just because I survived. Okay, now that makes me feel better.