“Bird strike!”

As promised in my last article I said I’d share more information on what happened on my return flight from Barcelona to Liverpool. For starters, the flight was delayed and with what I know now, if we had departed on time I probably wouldn’t have had to write this article.

So, we board the Ryanair flight and all is calm. I’ve settled into my middle seat with a Spotify playsuit and a new book, 2 hours 40 minutes later I’ll be back in Liverpool. Oh, how naïve I was.

The calm before the storm…

As the plane took off there was a lot of noise. Like a lot. The entire cabin was humming with an intense growling that didn’t cease when we were rising. A member of the cabin crew began walking up and down the aisle looking out the windows whilst we were still at a diagonal angle. I was still calm at this stage.

…That was short-lived

But then something else entered my eardrums, the man sitting behind me. He started shouting at no one that the plane was turning around. Something was wrong. At this stage, we were fully in the air and the noise had subsided slightly.

Next up we have a red light appear outside the cockpit and an announcement from the pilot that on take off from Barcelona we hit several birds that were caught in the engine and wheels. They damaged one of the engines and it wouldn’t be safe to fly to Liverpool with the fault, so we had to return to the airport. Yes, frustrating for everyone and there were a lot of sighs on the plane as we had already been delayed.

At this stage however the man behind me began yelling that the plane was “going down”, that the “engines had stopped working” and in his eyes to make matters worse, we’d have to emergency land in Manchester. Unfortunately, for anxious people like myself and the young kid beside me, we were flying over the ocean when the roaring engine completely stopped making noise and the plane lowered abruptly. Queue the Catholic guilt and prayers, “please God don’t let the last thing I hear be this man yelling “Bird strike!”.

Jack of all trades, master of none

Not only had he caused me and the wee guy beside me to freak out, but he also incited several people around us to join in this catastrophising narrative that we were all going to die. Within 20 minutes of being airborne, he became an aviation expert, pilot, engineer, psychic, and for the sake of the birds, David Attenborough.

Long story short, I lived and we landed. But the drama continued on land as the emergency services came rushing down the runway. Of course, this sent waves of thrill through my plane neighbours as everyone took out their phones to record the drama. So much so that the Spanish police had to board the plane to tell them to quit recording the emergency teams working.

Well, my plane folk didn’t like authority chastising them. It went from being told to put your phone away to the theory that Ryanair was purposefully keeping us on the plane as the engine burnt beside us. As if their baggage charges weren’t criminal enough. In addition, the videos that had already been uploaded to social media were like commodities on the black market with several people suggesting they could sell them to Lad Bible. Eh?

At the wrong place, at the wrong time

I didn’t have time to die in a plane crash, I was too busy being annoyed at the ridiculousness that was happening around me. I can only compare this wildfire response to the “Bird strike"!” to the sensationalism we see every day on social media. In a confined space, it only took one person to set off multiple on an aeroplane. I don’t know how other areas of the plane were dealing with the damaged engine news but it seemed that when I boarded the shuttle bus to take us to the replacement plane people with kids were calm and content. I paid for my damn seat which means I paid to nearly have a panic attack.

If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry

I can only say, if I wasn’t the milk bottle white I was boarding the plane, I certainly was getting off it. My nerves were shot. After all the high-intensity activity I returned to my flat and deflated to the sofa, only three hours later than originally planned. I swear folks, a bottle of Corona never tasted so good at 2 o’clock in the morning.