Last Thursday evening on dusk as I was being blown home across the Westgate Bridge I saw the most intriguing sight. There was a very strong northerly blowing and the Australian flag on one of twin peaks was flying strong and proud. From the south an A380 was destined for Tullamarine. I know it was a Qantas A380 because these giants in the sky have become so recognisable. But suddenly I had to blink a few times to be sure I was seeing what I was seeing!
You see from my aspect - coming up the bridge - this aircraft was heading directly for the flag!
I was a little alarmed.
Several thoughts ran through my mind instantaneously!
1. Was anyone else seeing this?
2. Can I pick up my iPhone, find the camera icon, lower the window, press record while all the time staying in my lane without crashing into the suicide barriers, inflating my 6 airbags and floating away just like in the movie ‘Up’!
3. I could sell this picture to Qantas! Because it would be a spectacular shot for the Spirit of Australia if I could capture it at the very moment it took out the Australian Flag! Not to mention plumping up my ailing superannuation fund!
I have no idea why I can’t sleep at night because I constantly exhaust myself!
But of course none of this was real. It was only but a spectacular illusion.
A lesson that things are not always what they seem.
I read with great interest in yesterday’s Age the interview with Captain Richard de Crespigny of QF32 notoriety, the Qantas A380 flight that lost 2 engines in 2010. I read this with great interest for several reasons.
I have held a lifelong fascination with how planes stay up.
But mostly I was fascinated with his initial reactions to this unexpected and unimaginable event, and his frame of mind in the aftermath.
You see many of us have our own little QF32’s in life. And it was more than a little comforting in a strange kind of way to understand that while the circumstances can all be quite different, (after all I was not responsible for 400 lives, only one) – the human response to a shock can be quite similar. I feel extremely re-assured and a little less alone after reading this article.
I had my own little QF32 five years ago.
In Hawaii. My husband, while not losing an engine, lost power to his controls. His mind.
“The cockpit turned into a frenzy of red warning lights and buzzing alarms but de Crespigny says there was an air of calm among the pilots”
My own little cockpit did the same.
Warning signs and alarm bells every which way.
There was an air of calm but deep down I know it was more an air of shock. Of fear.
Things are not always what they seem.
Finally after every test known to man the discharge from the hospital was given.
The ok to fly.
They had found nothing. I was ecstatic.
Until I learnt that with matters of the mind it is actually better to find something than to not.
Things are not always what they seem.
We managed to get the last two seats on the Qantas flight home to Melbourne via Sydney.
The old 767’s. The 2-3-2 seating configuration. And I was in the middle of the 3.
A horror within a horror!
As soon as I sat down and fastened my seat belt I was so overcome with the awfulness of the previous 3 days I felt that old familiar feeling. It had been many many years but I knew without doubt that I was about to faint. So I put my head down and faint I did.
My husband’s state was that he was completely unaware.
But the man in the seat to my left was not.
When I came around to that post faint familiar sound of the rush of air in my ears I asked him were we taking off?
He said no and asked was I alright to be flying? I told him yes and asked him to please not say anything to anyone.
I had one purpose only and that was to get us home.
He said ‘You don’t seem very well’. He was concerned. I said ‘I am fine.’
It was the person on the other side of me he should have been concerned about.
Things are not always what they seem.
At least he is talking. For months after the incident, he says, he was ''maxed out''. ''I was affected mentally. I was crying, my mind was frenetically busy reliving the flight and I was exhausted even though our flight had a happy outcome. There was a time when my wife and I drove to Newcastle and back [from their Sydney home] and during the four hours I think I said one thing. It was because I was constantly reliving the flight’
I understand exactly what the Captain is saying here. Exactly.
For weeks and weeks after our return home, when things went downhill even more rapidly, all I did was talk. Talk to doctors, talk to family, talk to friends, talk to employers, talk to more doctors, talk, talk, talk.
Until I shut down.
I could talk no more.
When asked if he ever suffered nightmares, he said never but that his mind was busy reenacting the flight, "recycling through". "I thought 'could I have done something better? Should I have done something differently'? And I think that's a normal reaction."
The thinking was as bad as the talking. Over and over and over. Did I not see the signs? Did I ignore them? Should I have sought help sooner? Could I have done something differently? Why didn’t I do this? Why did I do that?
Because this was the unimaginable. I did the best I could in the only way I knew how. I had no co-pilots to confer with. There was just me. There is no simulator to prepare us for these emergencies.
John F. Kennedy said “The essence of ultimate decisions remains impenetrable to the observer—often, indeed to the decider himself”. We may not know why we have so decided and our explanation to having done so can be or is fanciful when really mined. John F. Kennedy was right, we really do not know even though we may attempt with confidence to explain why we so decided.
In a way, the book has been a form of therapy for de Crespigny
Writing is always a therapy.
It is a closure.
And like Captain de Crespigny is back in the air – so too am I !!!
''There is a need for good training of pilots, we are not just glorified bus drivers,''
Captain de Crespigny – I think this is a misconception. At this very moment as I write this blog entry one of my oldest and dearest friends, an A380 Captain, a Training Captain, is winging his way across the Pacific. I would never insult his or my own intelligence by referring to him or any Australian Pilot as a glorified bus driver.
You really don’t need worry about this.
Enough now. For us both. Finis.
I always knew that aircraft wasn’t going to take out the flag on the Westgate Bridge!
Things are not always what they seem.
But it really was the most magnificent sight.
