I'm back .... but had a rather interesting return.
The flight from Manila to Amsterdam (... or Hamsterdam if you're a mouse ), well apart from the fact they only had 4 people on immigration with about 2000 people in the queue and all flights leaving within 5 minutes .... the airlines were going mad
Anyway, after taking off nearly an hour late we landed in Amsterdam about 10mins early , and the Liverpool flight left bang on time.
We were about 1/2 way through the flight and had not long levelled off at 35,000ft when we started a sharp turn and started descending, and the engines were throttled well back so it went quiet ...... I was then trying to explain to the guy next to me that the Sun had suddenly appeared on the wrong side of the plane .... had the Earth shifted in space?
Not long after this the pilot gives an announcement, why the hell do they never start these with "Their is no need to panic but...." .... instead of "We have a problem..." then a pause when your life flashes before you ... which in my case doesn't happen as I'm waaaaay too busy thinking about sheep
Anyway, it appears as we levelled off the cockpit window cracked right across ..... images of the pilots being sucked into the engines and me saving the plane after bringing the nose to a stop in KFC .... so hence the sudden turn and rapid decent.
The annoying thing was that although just in sight of the East coast of England, we turned back .... I'd have thought being over land was the safest option .... but KLM decided it was cheaper rather than safer to return as all the parts are in Amsterdam
Anyway, if you know Amsterdam airport, they have a runway out in the coutryside ... and as we had an emergency landing they put us there .... probably so if we did crash we only killed the odd cow
The emergency services were around the runway when we landed, but all was fine. .... strangely, you often wonder what goes through your mind in these situations... me.. nothing ... I couldn't care less ... I just carried on as normal
After landing we parked next to a twin plane, and they put us on that... but not until buses came to take us the 50yds to the next plane .... they transferred the luggage faster than the passengers
I eventually got into Liverpool about 1.5hrs late, but alive .... unless I did die and I'm now in another quantum universe