Flight 370
The pain, the unbearable pain. I'm late for my business conference in Beijing, but that doesn't matter now does it? All those people, dead. Why am I the only one? What did I do to deserve to live? With this pain, I wish I hadn't survived. They say the odds of a plane crashing are 1 in 11 million, so why did I have to be part of that one? My life was so peaceful, so normal just a days ago. But that has all changed now.
It was Saturday morning. I had packed my bags for the trip the night before, planning to stay until Monday. I kissed my Husband goodbye, told my kids to be good, and left. Everything seemed so normal. I'd flown dozens of times before, but I was still a little nervous. I got in my car and drove the 20 minutes to the airport. I parked in Parking Lot C like always, went inside and got my bags checked. I sat in the terminal waiting for almost thirty minutes until the boarding for flight 370 began . I'd never flown with Malaysia Airlines before, but I saw no reason to be concerned. Boy was I wrong.
I sat in the plane for about twenty minutes before everyone was onboard. I heard an announcement saying that there were some technical difficulties. I thought it was a little odd, but thought nothing more of it. We had to wait an extra hour before we were actually able to leave. Everything seemed fine after that, normal. Take-off was just like it had been the last 37 times I experienced it. Little did I know this flight would end much different than expected.
We had been in the air a few hours when I started to hear a whirring sound coming from the turbine outside my window. I could feel the vibrations from it too. I told one of the flight attendants and she said it was just the sound of the engines settling. I heard it throughout the whole flight. I kept hoping it was just my imagination. "Don't worry," she said, "it'll be fine." she said. Well, we were both wrong. It wasn't my imagination, and it definitely wasn't "fine".
I tried to keep my mind off the sound. I did some work on my laptop, I tried to sleep, read, eat. Anything at all so I didn't have to listen to that sound. I got up and moved around the plane, but there was turbulence so I was made to sit back down. All the seats were occupied, so I couldn't move away from the window. I was finally able to fall asleep, thanks to some ear plugs another passenger gave me.
I woke to the sound of metal grinding and people screaming. The pilot announced that we were losing altitude fast, and to practice emergency procedures. The masks fell and I put mine on, breathing deeply as air filled my lungs. After I'd secured myself I looked around, panicked. I looked out my window to see the turbine not spinning, the same turbine that had been making the strange noise. I stared out my window in disbelief, knowing this was the cause of the plane losing altitude. Then, for no discernible reason, the turbine exploded.
An ear splitting scream resounded inside my head as a piece of shrapnel broke the window and flew past my face. Several other projectiles flew through the cabin, lodging themselves in the floor, walls, ceiling, and in people. My head hit the back of the seat as I realized that the mind shattering scream I was hearing was my own. My screaming was only adding to the cacophony the cabin had been filled with. So I sat there, motionless, not making a sound as a piece of luggage flew toward my broken window and hit me on the head, striking me unconscious.
I woke again to the sound of screaming. I noticed a stream of blood trickling down my face as I opened my eyes. The first thought I had led me to look out what used to be my window. What I saw astonished me. The sea was so close I felt I could reach out and touch it. which the whole plane soon did. We hit the water nose first. The cockpit and whole front of the plane crushed from the impact. My head bounced off the seat in front of me, knocking me unconscious yet again.
I slowly woke up as I felt water at me feet. I saw some people crying, some people screaming, and some people motionless. I unbuckled my seatbelt and get up, but a sharp pain in my foot prevented me from doing so. I looked down and saw my ankle had broken during the impact. Using the seats to support me, I moved up the aisle to the emergency exit, going into deeper water. There are three flight attendants standing near; talking panickedly among themselves. As I approached one looked up and told me to return to my seat, but I didn't.
Instead, I began to try to open the exit. As I struggled, a senior flight attendant entered the cabin and opened the door for me. More water flooded in and he handed me a life jacket and a large backpack. He told me it was a self-inflating life raft and moved down the aisle, trying to help people into life jackets along the way. I pulled the string hanging off the backpack and the boat began to inflate. I quickly pushed it out the door before it became too big to fit and watched as it grew into full size.
I stepped out of the plane and into the water, the laceration on my head stinging from the salt water. I swam to the lifeboat with great effort, thanks to my broken ankle. I grabbed onto the rope that wraps around the outside of the boat and looked back, expecting to see other following me. No one appeared, even the flight attendants standing near the door had disappeared. I told myself more would come soon and struggled to pull myself up into the boat. With a broken ankle, it was excruciatingly painful and extraordinarily difficult.
I lay there in the boat, catching my breath as I hear the shouts of the people inside the plane. I sat up and looked back onto the crashed plane. Watching in horror as I saw a great deal of air escape from the planes ruined carcass, making it sink much faster. A few people scrambled to get to the emergency exit I used, as well as try to fit through broken windows. They weren't fast enough… none of them were. The plane went under and I saw their terrified faces disappear under the water, never to be seen again. I was alone on the ocean. The only survivor of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
I've been drifting for a few days now. My exposed skin sun burnt and dry, my body dehydrated and withering away. I've nothing to do but think on what quite possibly may be my last life experience, the plane crash. Could I have done something? If I had insisted something was wrong, would everyone have died? I'll never know now. All I know is that I am alive, and they are all dead. I'm tired now, but see a small ship in the distance and it seems to have seen me. My last thought as I drift into sleep is not I'm saved or, Thank God. No, my last thought is, Out of all those people… why me?
END
