Finding Angels
Lund, in fact, was less tranquil than she appeared. “I was in denial, really,” she says. She tried to believe the pilot's assurances that there was little danger, and to disregard the worst-case scenarios on TV. Still, she would soon type a text message on her phone to her younger sister, saying, “Pray for me.” Although she hungered for information, she couldn't watch the news shows for long without needing to get up and walk off her nerves. On one such stroll, she ran into a flight attendant, who saw the tension in her face and gave her a warm hug. So did Taryn Manning, who co-stars in the film Hustle & Flow, and Manning's publicist. Lund returned to her seat, feeling ready to contend with whatever lay ahead.
In row 22, Sam and Janel Meza were talking about their past. Married for 35 years and the parents of three grown children, the Mezas, both 56, are pastors of the Living Hope Community Church in Mission Hills, California. “If there's anything I've ever done that you haven't forgiven me for,” said Sam, “I ask you to forgive me today.” Janel couldn't think of a thing. “Sam,” she said, “there's no one I'd rather enter into eternity with than you.” The couple sang Psalm 34, with its line, “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him.” Beside them, a hip New Yorker grimly clutched his water bottle. “Look out the window,” Janel told him. “Do you see the angels？” The young man looked. “I see them,” he whispered.
In truth, the angels who most impressed the Mezas —— and many other passengers —— were the six members of the flight crew. As the plane circled low over the Pacific Ocean, burning off heavy fuel to make a controlled landing somewhat easier, attendants circulated in the cabin. They were generous with jokes, reassuring words, and pats on the shoulder. When they began to redistribute the plane's weight, passing carry-on luggage to the rear in a kind of bucket brigade, Janel was again moved to prayer. “I said, 'Lord, that's how I want to be, fulfilling our purpose. If you give us an opportunity to land, that's how we want to live.' ”
The flight attendants soon moved some passengers rearward too. Lisa Schiff found herself beside a woman her age, who was as distraught as Schiff had been not long before. To calm her new seatmate, Schiff spoke of a psychic reading she'd once had. “I said, 'Don't worry, I'm going to live to be 84, so we're all good.' ” She held the woman's hand for the rest of the flight.
Christiana Lund wound up next to an elderly couple who'd been through an emergency landing 44 years before. “They said, 'If we survived that, I'm sure we can survive this,' ” she recalls. But far below, on a Los Angeles freeway, her father was wrestling with a darker memory： an Alaska Airlines flight that crashed in January 2000, killing all aboard, while attempting an emergency landing at LAX.
Richard Lund, 54, a background photographer for TV and films （he shot the Manhattan skyline that hangs behind Jay Leno on The Tonight Show）, was driving to a set when he heard on the car radio that his daughter's plane was in trouble. “I thought, Whatever's going to happen, I've got to be there,” he says. He sped to Costa Mesa, told his producer he couldn't work, and then headed north toward LAX, where newscasters said Flight 292 would be arriving within the hour.
Richard sobbed as he weaved through heavy traffic, thinking about what life would be like without Christiana. The previous night, she'd come home late from a friend's TV shoot, and he had gone to work early that morning, without saying goodbye. In desperation, he now called his daughter's cell phone and left a message： “Chrissy, I don't know if you'll ever hear this, but I just wanted to tell you that I love you.” Then he barreled down an exit ramp near the airport, hoping to find a vantage point where he could witness either his worst nightmare or his greatest reprieve.
On the plane, the crew had given passengers their final instructions for the emergency landing. To avoid injury if escape slides were deployed, women wearing high heels were asked to remove them. Those carrying ID cards in their hand baggage were advised to place them in their pockets. （The attendants didn't mention that this would make it easier for bodies to be identified, but many people figured it out for themselves.） As the descent began, everyone assumed the emergency position： feet flat on the floor, head between legs and arms wrapped around the knees. Flight attendants began chanting, “Brace！ Brace！ Brace！” and the passengers repeated the mantra, drowning out the engines.
Parked on an industrial street, Richard watched the jet roar overhead； then he lost sight of it behind a warehouse. For agonizing minutes, he listened to the radio for news of a crash. But the JetBlue pilot knew precisely what he was doing. At 6：19 p.m., Scott Burke brought Flight 292 down on its rear wheels, and then settled the nose as gently as a mother laying her newborn in a bassinet. Twenty ambulances were standing by on the scene, along with 24 fire trucks； many of them chased the plane along the 11,000-foot runway. The front tires burned away, filling the air with acrid smoke, but the landing gear held firm. When the craft coasted to a stop, near the end of the tarmac, there was a deep silence on board.
Finally, Burke announced, “There is no fire,” and the cabin exploded in cheers. Christiana wept for the first time that day. She called her father's cell phone, told him she was safe. She phoned her mother, who was at a wedding in Minnesota. Last, she checked her voice mail, listened to her dad's farewell message, and could barely breathe for bawling.
Father and daughter found each other in the baggage-claim area, and clung together for a while. Then they joined several other passengers near the entrance to the terminal, where a horde of reporters and cameramen jostled for a sound bite. The next few days were crazy for the “survivors,” as some news outlets took to calling them. There were interviews and limousines and JetBlue freebies, and for many of them a nerve-racking but uneventful flight to JFK. At last, though, life returned to something like normal. Mastoon went back to his sampling equipment and turntables, Schiff to her gallery, the Mezas to their church, Christiana to her songwriting —— and to her night job as a cocktail waitress.
By then, the investigation of the near-disaster on Flight 292 had uncovered some startling news： At least seven other Airbus A320s had suffered similar malfunctions in recent years, though all had touched down safely.
Still, no one on board Flight 292 walked away unaltered. “There's something really great about flirting with death,” observes Schiff, “…… if you don't die.”
As Christiana Lund puts it： “I'm more focused now. I want the people in my life to know I care about them. And I don't want to waste any more time messing around. I want to take advantage of every day.”
*Watch footage of the emergency landing of JetBlue Flight 292.
Lund, in fact, was less tranquil than she appeared. “I was in denial, really,” she says. She tried to believe the pilot's assurances that there was little danger, and to disregard the worst-case scenarios on TV. Still, she would soon type a text message on her phone to her younger sister, saying, “Pray for me.” Although she hungered for information, she couldn't watch the news shows for long without needing to get up and walk off her nerves. On one such stroll, she ran into a flight attendant, who saw the tension in her face and gave her a warm hug. So did Taryn Manning, who co-stars in the film Hustle & Flow, and Manning's publicist. Lund returned to her seat, feeling ready to contend with whatever lay ahead.
In row 22, Sam and Janel Meza were talking about their past. Married for 35 years and the parents of three grown children, the Mezas, both 56, are pastors of the Living Hope Community Church in Mission Hills, California. “If there's anything I've ever done that you haven't forgiven me for,” said Sam, “I ask you to forgive me today.” Janel couldn't think of a thing. “Sam,” she said, “there's no one I'd rather enter into eternity with than you.” The couple sang Psalm 34, with its line, “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him.” Beside them, a hip New Yorker grimly clutched his water bottle. “Look out the window,” Janel told him. “Do you see the angels？” The young man looked. “I see them,” he whispered.
In truth, the angels who most impressed the Mezas —— and many other passengers —— were the six members of the flight crew. As the plane circled low over the Pacific Ocean, burning off heavy fuel to make a controlled landing somewhat easier, attendants circulated in the cabin. They were generous with jokes, reassuring words, and pats on the shoulder. When they began to redistribute the plane's weight, passing carry-on luggage to the rear in a kind of bucket brigade, Janel was again moved to prayer. “I said, 'Lord, that's how I want to be, fulfilling our purpose. If you give us an opportunity to land, that's how we want to live.' ”
The flight attendants soon moved some passengers rearward too. Lisa Schiff found herself beside a woman her age, who was as distraught as Schiff had been not long before. To calm her new seatmate, Schiff spoke of a psychic reading she'd once had. “I said, 'Don't worry, I'm going to live to be 84, so we're all good.' ” She held the woman's hand for the rest of the flight.
Christiana Lund wound up next to an elderly couple who'd been through an emergency landing 44 years before. “They said, 'If we survived that, I'm sure we can survive this,' ” she recalls. But far below, on a Los Angeles freeway, her father was wrestling with a darker memory： an Alaska Airlines flight that crashed in January 2000, killing all aboard, while attempting an emergency landing at LAX.
Richard Lund, 54, a background photographer for TV and films （he shot the Manhattan skyline that hangs behind Jay Leno on The Tonight Show）, was driving to a set when he heard on the car radio that his daughter's plane was in trouble. “I thought, Whatever's going to happen, I've got to be there,” he says. He sped to Costa Mesa, told his producer he couldn't work, and then headed north toward LAX, where newscasters said Flight 292 would be arriving within the hour.
Richard sobbed as he weaved through heavy traffic, thinking about what life would be like without Christiana. The previous night, she'd come home late from a friend's TV shoot, and he had gone to work early that morning, without saying goodbye. In desperation, he now called his daughter's cell phone and left a message： “Chrissy, I don't know if you'll ever hear this, but I just wanted to tell you that I love you.” Then he barreled down an exit ramp near the airport, hoping to find a vantage point where he could witness either his worst nightmare or his greatest reprieve.
On the plane, the crew had given passengers their final instructions for the emergency landing. To avoid injury if escape slides were deployed, women wearing high heels were asked to remove them. Those carrying ID cards in their hand baggage were advised to place them in their pockets. （The attendants didn't mention that this would make it easier for bodies to be identified, but many people figured it out for themselves.） As the descent began, everyone assumed the emergency position： feet flat on the floor, head between legs and arms wrapped around the knees. Flight attendants began chanting, “Brace！ Brace！ Brace！” and the passengers repeated the mantra, drowning out the engines.
Parked on an industrial street, Richard watched the jet roar overhead； then he lost sight of it behind a warehouse. For agonizing minutes, he listened to the radio for news of a crash. But the JetBlue pilot knew precisely what he was doing. At 6：19 p.m., Scott Burke brought Flight 292 down on its rear wheels, and then settled the nose as gently as a mother laying her newborn in a bassinet. Twenty ambulances were standing by on the scene, along with 24 fire trucks； many of them chased the plane along the 11,000-foot runway. The front tires burned away, filling the air with acrid smoke, but the landing gear held firm. When the craft coasted to a stop, near the end of the tarmac, there was a deep silence on board.
Finally, Burke announced, “There is no fire,” and the cabin exploded in cheers. Christiana wept for the first time that day. She called her father's cell phone, told him she was safe. She phoned her mother, who was at a wedding in Minnesota. Last, she checked her voice mail, listened to her dad's farewell message, and could barely breathe for bawling.
Father and daughter found each other in the baggage-claim area, and clung together for a while. Then they joined several other passengers near the entrance to the terminal, where a horde of reporters and cameramen jostled for a sound bite. The next few days were crazy for the “survivors,” as some news outlets took to calling them. There were interviews and limousines and JetBlue freebies, and for many of them a nerve-racking but uneventful flight to JFK. At last, though, life returned to something like normal. Mastoon went back to his sampling equipment and turntables, Schiff to her gallery, the Mezas to their church, Christiana to her songwriting —— and to her night job as a cocktail waitress.
By then, the investigation of the near-disaster on Flight 292 had uncovered some startling news： At least seven other Airbus A320s had suffered similar malfunctions in recent years, though all had touched down safely.
Still, no one on board Flight 292 walked away unaltered. “There's something really great about flirting with death,” observes Schiff, “…… if you don't die.”
As Christiana Lund puts it： “I'm more focused now. I want the people in my life to know I care about them. And I don't want to waste any more time messing around. I want to take advantage of every day.”
*Watch footage of the emergency landing of JetBlue Flight 292.