I had just arrived in Schiphol Airport, had a look at the departure board and it said our flight to Manchester was 30 minutes delayed. Got checked in, went through passport control and me and Ilse took a stroll in the terminal. Got a sandwich and coffee and watched as our plane was pushed back another 30mins to 11 o'clock.
I whipped out the laptop, did a bit of light browsing and even appeared on Facebook. After that, I went to the toy shop and bought Lego to keep me occupied on the flight. Anyway, our time had come – we were allowed to board. We began to go through Dutch baggage check, the man even tried to speak to me in their native tongue, so I smiled to let Ilse explain to him, I was English.
So, we were about to take off and I whipped open the Lego to make. However, on approach to the Isles of the United Kingdom, we began to feel more and more turbulence. This grew into some wacky ride over the Pennines and on approach Manchester, people had begun to take out sick bags from the seats. "Weaklings!" I thought to myself, "I'm from Yorkshire, I will not join in this awful event of nausea!".
So on carried the plane, and actually, as we went down, the plane was rolling pretty badly. However, I had been to a theme park the day before and was immune to the stomach churning feelings the other passages were having – even Ilse was gripping on to my hand rather tight. THEN THE LANDING STRIP WAS IN SIGHT. "YAAAAAY" we all must of thought. Ilse and a random Asian guy beside me looked relieved too.
However, more is to come, as I looked out of the window to see the Manchester terminals, it suddenly started to disappear. We had in fact come in to land in such a fashion that if we did, we would of all died. So the pilot shot us straight back into the air and explained what had gone wrong. A woman behind Ilse was definitely filling up the sick bags. He explained that if we were to abort the landing again, we'd have to go to Liverpool. Ilse was now complaining to me about how shit this had all become. However, sadistically I was loving the thrill.
Anyhow, round 2 commenced. We plummeted to the tarmac, and as the passengers filled up more sick bags, I turned around to random Asian guy and told him "don't stare into the bag, it'll make it worse!". I thought he needed good fearless Yorkshire advice. And then we hit the tarmac, stopped, gave the pilot a round of applause (it felt wicked to be alive). Left the plane, nearly got blown away by the wind.
Enjoyed it? You may need a cuppa after all that.
