I was on a messed up plane once.
When we emergency landed in Albuquerque, I learned a lot about what I do (and don't do) when I think I'm about to die.
All this talk about Boeing planes busting open and sucking people’s shirts off is crazy. It’s every few days we hear about a door having AWOL bolts, a window giving up mid-flight, some jackass tryna bail halfway through a transatlantic trip. It’s enough! Already easily the second-most anxiety inducing way to travel (that Titanic submersible effortlessly took the top spot last year), flying doesn’t need additional tribulation. And yet, the horrors persist.
I’m pretty sure one of the first episodes of What a Day (the podcast from which most of you learned of me) was about a Boeing 737 MAX nose-diving because of malfunctioning software. In fact, our first week back from the holidays in early 2020 was another story about another crash. There’s a documentary about it, but I already have enough trouble sleeping in this economy so I’ll just have to imagine the tragedies if I really must.
Anyway, back in 2018, I was hired to host MTV’s red carpet for Jurassic World 2. It was such a fun time. I began my forever friendship with Daniella Piñeda that night, and Chris Pratt flirted with me on film (pre-Republican turn), so now it’s how my reel opens. But the day before the event, my cross-country flight from LGA to LAX had some pretty nuts troubles.
Thank God for iPhones because I have so much footage. So I was wearing an eye mask and a face mask on the flight because I always get sick on flights. It’s funny to me that people have such an aversion to them post-covid because even pre-covid I was aware that I was almost certainly going to catch whatever gross shit my flight companions were coughing directly into our recycled air.
Anyway, I remember people filing into the plane looking at me like I was suspicious, and I found it funny. For the majority of the flight I was watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on my phone and minding my business. But I’m a flight sleeper, so probably around 2 and a half hours in I decided to nap. But I was woken up by a few sensations at once. With my eye mask still covering my eyes I could sense a lot of movement. Once I lifted it, there was confirmation that even though we were mid-air a lot of people decided to stand at the same time. “A terrorist attack? Seriously?” I thought. “How inconvenient.”
The captain then got on the loud speaker and said something to the effect of, “Remain calm. The people standing in the aisles are flight attendants being transported from New York to LA.”
“Great, a flash mob.” I continued in delusion.
“The plane is on fire…” the captain continued. And at that moment a hysterical woman at the back of the plane screamed, “OH GOD NO!” which is probably the right response? But she kinda messed up the vibes because before that I was convinced that the plane I was physically sitting on being engulfed in flames wasn’t so bad.
“We are going to land in 4 minutes in Albuquerque. The flight attendants will come by your aisle and show you how to brace for impact.”
It was then that I realized, “Well ain’t shit you can do about it now.” I guess in hypothetical versions of this I’d always assumed I’d be the lady at the back of the plane losing my shit, but the whole, “you gotta brace for impact” of it all really just made all the panic leave my body. The flight attendants quickly came to our aisle and told us to fold in half, resting our chest on our thighs and look at the ground. After they moved on to the next aisle the middle seat guy and I (in the aisle seat) exchanged glances, but quickly thought better of it. No, we really don’t need to get to know each other now, in the last 2 and a half minutes of our lives. We had the whole flight to exchange pleasantries before this, charge it to the game.
As I assumed the position, I made sure my phone was between my feet on the ground. For a moment I considered calling this boy I wasted my 20s on and tell him that I still loved him. That even though my time was cut short, I’d want him to be happy.
Thought better of that, too. It crossed my mind that if I didn’t die, how embarrassing would that be? So instead I called my mom and left her a voicemail. With about 60 seconds to the ground I think I just said, “hey mom, plane’s on fire and we might not make it. I love you. Don’t be too sad.”
BOOM.
We hit the ground almost like a bounce? And by that point the smoke we were smelling could be seen. Firefighters immediately boarded the plane, but we all grabbed our shit and pushed past them as quickly as possible.
So we get off the plane, and the Albuquerque airport is tiny. There was one bar so those of us lucky enough to have been re-booked on a later flight all went straight there. I heard a doofy guy with his neck pillow still on his neck say, “Wow! We made it to LA super fast.”
Dude.
After procuring the requisite Jameson and Diet Coke, no lime because there is no dignity in this life, I got a call from my mom.
“Hey Kilah, what’s up?”
“Did you hear my message?”
“Yeah it was all garbled. What did you need?”
“Oh, I was just telling you that my plane was on fire and we were crash landing in New Mexico, but I survived so I guess it doesn’t matter.”
“WHAT?!”
And in that moment I wanted to kiss myself. Truly imagine how embarrassing it would be if this guy I hadn’t spoken to in months got some garbly ass message and then never called me back. I don’t know that my ego would’ve recovered.
I also thought, “ATT sucks ass.” And I still feel that way. The service is bad and it’s overpriced.
We hung up and I made friends with Lil Wayne’s costume designer who was on the phone arranging a car to drive his clothes to Los Angeles. Then I found a bathroom stall to hit my weed vape pen because that was a lot.
Thankfully my shirt didn’t fly off, I didn’t freeze to death, and nobody was walking on the wing. Just a harrowing experience that was over as soon as it had begun.
So yeah, I guess my advice is don’t call that guy. Not when you’re about to die, not ever. And if you can, avoid the Boeing flight.
A
My parents both worked for the airlines when I was a kid. They taught me to say, “if it’s not Boeing, I’m not going!” when I was like six. It was cute. It did not age well. Tighten those bolts dummies!!
omg i would not have handled that that well. i'm in awe.