Final Approach
I was half-asleep as my flight was coming in for its final approach to Luanda around 4am on Wednesday morning. Through my fog I heard the captain: “Flight attendants prepare for arrival.”
There was the familiar rumble as the landing gear came down. I thought about waking up, but was relishing five more minutes of shitty airplane sleep before officially landing in Africa.
But instead of a steady descent, the engines kicked up to a deafening roar and the plane abruptly began to climb again. The captain came on, “Ladies and gentlemen, we had to abort our approach into Luanda.”
My left eye popped open.
Hmm … probably not a great sign. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence in the cabin, with eyelids closed and mind awake I began to wonder why the captain hadn’t said anything else. Abort the landing? What’s going on? Is something broken down on the runway? Did they close the airport? Is there a major problem? A military coup, perhaps? Are we going to end up landing in Kinshasa or something? …
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. We had to abort our approach into Luanda because the tower did not answer our calls for clearance.
But they now appear to be awake, so we should be landing in approximately eight minutes.”
Not sure if he really needed to mention the “awake” part … But it was a smooth landing.
