Emergency Landing

In all my years of flying all over the world, rarely have I had an exciting an experience as we did coming back from Ahmedabad to Pune last month (a very turbulent landing at Cincinnati which resulted in a passenger passing out, and an aborted landing in Paris, I think it was, are the other candidates).

We took off from Ahmedabad on an Indigo flight at around 600, more than an hour late since the incoming flight had got delayed. By 645, we were hovering around Pune, but bad visibility conditions due to heavy rain meant that we weren't in a position to land. We kept circling for well over 45 min, with lots of turbulence, when the pilot announced that we were running out of fuel, and hence would need to make an emergency landing in Mumbai.

We landed in Mumbai peacefully at 800. However, it was a long wait at the tarmac, and even though we don't need a visa to see Mumbai, we couldn't even leave the plane. The airhostesses, one of whom was Goan, were darlings, and even though the flight wasn't supposed to serve hot beverages (being a short flight), one of them graciously made tea for me. They did their best to take care of the passengers, serving whatever food and drinks were available, although the four screaming infants on board did nothing to calm the agitated passengers.

Finally, at around 930, we took off for Pune again, and landed safely, just before another major cloudburst stopped airport operations for the night.