The Time My Flight Went Up in Smoke

An airport saga.

Travelers collect air-travel stories the way fishermen collect tall tales. We love to recount our flight delay woes or the crazy things we see in airports or how many hours we spent in transit. These moments spent in the air and running through airports bookend each of our trips, providing a sort of exclamation point to our travels.

I am no exception.

My recent trip to Australia was supposed to take about thirty hours of transit, consisting of a short flight to Atlanta, a two hour layover, a flight to Los Angeles, a two hour layover, a fifteen hour flight to Sydney, a five hour layover, and a two hour flight to Melbourne. Yes, I’m recounting how long my journey was, but that’s not the point of this story. The point of this story is how nothing went as planned.

I arrived in Atlanta as scheduled, grabbed a snack, and found my gate along with everyone else on my flight. We were quiet and orderly, ready and waiting to board long before it was time. The gate agent announced we would start the boarding process in ten minutes. I relaxed in the knowledge that everything was going smoothly on my Atlanta layover; I would be on time to make my connecting flight in L.A.

Suddenly the gate agent made a new announcement: boarding would be delayed by about ten minutes because the airline had given our pilots to another flight. I looked around at my fellow passengers; confusion rang clear on everyone’s countenance. They can give away our pilots?!

A sense of dread began to creep down my spine. I knew it would be far more than a ten minute delay if we had no pilot. I began to worry about missing my flight to Australia; I knew from previous experience how quickly a delay can eat up a two hour layover.

Suddenly the gate agent announced we would begin boarding without the pilots. There was a crew of flight attendants already on board, and if we boarded now we could wait for the pilots on the plane. Still plagued by confusion (how can they do this?) and dread (will I miss my flight to Sydney?) I boarded the pilot-less flight to L.A.

We were running about thirty minutes late when our pilots came on board and began the pre-flight safety checks which took another twenty minutes. I began messaging customer service to find a back-up flight to Sydney. But wait! We were leaving! The plane taxied to the runway… and then it sat there for a full fifteen minutes. We weren’t taking off. What was happening?

Our pilot made an announcement that we would be returning to the gate; a maintenance light had come on, and they had to get it checked before we could take off. I was thankful that the airline was taking our safety seriously, but I was also quite stressed out. At this point, I was certain I would miss my flight to Australia. I didn’t know if there would be a second flight out of L.A. to Sydney that night!

As we sat on the plane, waiting for the maintenance crew to check it out, I contacted customer service again. I turns out there was indeed a second flight to Sydney that night. Instead of flying out of L.A. at 8 p.m., I would fly out at 10 p.m. My long layover in Sydney meant this was no problem at all. I relaxed, and eventually the plane took off.

The flight to Los Angeles was uneventful. One more leg of the long journey was over. I found some dinner in the L.A. airport and moseyed to my gate with plenty of time to spare. At around 9 p.m. we began the boarding process for the long-haul flight to Sydney. They allowed about two groups to board before the gate agent stopped making announcements entirely. Typically the boarding process happens fast. I knew something was wrong yet again.

After what felt like an eternity of silence (fifteen minutes), the gate agent came on the intercom and said, “You know what, if you have a ticket for this flight to Sydney just get on the plane.” No boarding groups? No order? Something was definitely wrong. I began to worry about my new flight to Australia. Would this plane take off on time? But I went up to the gate, scanned my ticket, and boarded the plane.

It wasn’t a very full flight, and I was overjoyed to find I had an entire row to myself. As I settled into my seat, it became very clear that the plane was not taking off anytime soon. The flight attendants were just hanging out, not doing any pre-flight checks. The pilot made no announcements. No one new was boarding the plane. Strange.

I dozed off; by this time I had already been traveling for about twelve hours. It was 1 a.m. on the East Coast, and I was exhausted. Maybe if I fell asleep now I could stay asleep for much of the flight to Australia. I woke up a couple of hours later. We were still sitting at the gate. The flight had never taken off.

I found out from a flight attendant that the airline was holding our plane. The first flight to Sydney (my original flight) had been cancelled, and they wanted to re-book as many of those passengers on my current flight as possible. As I kissed my row of empty seats goodbye, I laughed at my earlier stress in Atlanta. I would’ve ended up on this flight either way. How silly of my to worry; everything works out in the end. That must be the moral here.

Wrong. As the new passengers trickled onto the plane, the full story began to surface.

The first flight to Sydney left L.A. on time at 8 p.m. I had indeed missed it thanks to the delay in Atlanta. It flew about half an hour out of L.A., over the ocean towards Australia, when smoke began to fill the galley. The plane immediately turned around and flew back to LAX for an emergency landing. It was only upon landing and being surrounded by fire trucks that the passengers realized their plane was potentially on fire.

That’s right: my first flight to Australia, the one I missed due to that pesky delay, went up in smoke. As I heard this unbelievable tale from my fellow passengers, feeling so grateful that I wasn’t on that plane, I wondered if maybe the moral of my long journey that day was “everything happens for a reason”.

Whether or not there’s a moral to my story, it is definitely going into my collection of air travel tall tales.

* I did make it Australia. New city guides and photos from that trip are upcoming!

* No one on that 8 p.m. flight was harmed by the smoke. The airline handled it extremely well, prioritizing safety and gifting travelers with a bunch of frequent flier miles as an apology. Though this incident is still under investigation by the FAA, it was made clear there was no smoke in the cockpit of the plane, just the galley, and most passengers on board were unaware of the smoke before landing. So when I say “my flight went up in smoke”, I’m exaggerating much like those fishermen who exaggerate the tall tales of the fish that got away.