Super Born: Seduction of Being by kkornell Page A

power on the
left and the continuance of full power on the right, the plane
twisted, and the right wing rose. The turbulence made the right
engine stall and flame out, causing the plane to nose down to the
left.

    That was when I saw the orange ball engulf the
left engine and the poor thing almost rolled over on its
side.
    My heart stopped for a second when I thought of
all those people on board, imagining what they must be feeling as
they began to fall. Imagine was all I could do while watching it
actually happen from the outside. It wasn’t until later when I read
the flight transcripts and watched the news reports that I
developed a full picture of what really happened inside the
plane.
    Inside the cockpit, the alarm bells sounded as
the pilots feverishly tried to figure out what had happened. With
no power and some of the flight surface controls not responding,
they had little control over the plane. They contacted the tower,
declaring an emergency, and fought to restart the right engine.
There were routines they had learned during their training for the
loss of one engine, two engines, or flight controls, but with none
working, they had few options. They needed to restart the right
engine; the left was obviously gone.
    Flight attendants told of what they saw and
said as their training clicked on and they instructed the
passengers to assume a “safe” crash position, while one tried to
reach the captain for instructions.
    Most telling for me were the stories of the
passengers themselves. Their stories moved me to tears. In the back
of the plane, a young mother sat between her seven-year-old
daughter and six year-old son. She pulled her children to her,
unable to answer their repeated pleas: “What’s going on,
Mommy?”
    A young college student and his girlfriend sat
in the front right of the plane. The girl clutched the young man’s
arm and sobbed. When interviewed, the young man talked about his
sense of the “immortality of youth” beginning to fall away at that
moment; how his sense of life changed forever.
    A stewardess told how she struggled to hang on
to the overhead and angle her body against the tilt in the plane
while she tried to help a young mother strap her newborn into the
car seat carrier beside her. “What’s going on?” the mother asked,
without answer.
    Meanwhile, in the cabin, the captain fought the
controls, while the copilot went through the restart sequence on
the right engine. Ahead of them in the darkness, darker than the
sky around it, loomed the peak of North Mountain.
    The events in the cockpit were amazing to read
about and the interviews with the pilots brought home the terror
happening inside the plane. The pilot said he knew that if he had
enough power, he could do just about anything with a jet. He spoke
of having flown at the speed of sound down desert canyons when he
was in the Air Force and never breaking a sweat. He was also
confident they could start the right engine, if they had the
time.
    “ Nick! I need that engine, now!” he
shouted to the copilot. But looking at the switches he had set and
those that were yet to go before he could try the engine, the pilot
said he knew that they didn’t have the time. He looked at North
Mountain’s rapid approach and settled back in his seat.
“Nick!”
    “ Just a minute, Skipper, I’m almost
ready,” answered the copilot, committed to his work.
    The captain said that he glanced up to see
North Mountain’s approach and it triggered his thoughts. Although
his hands and feet never faltered or left the controls, he said his
mind began to race. He spoke of having lost both his parents in
rapid succession two years before—the only family he had left was
his wife and their two sons, who were already young men. His
thoughts turned to them in the best of times: his wife’s smiling,
laughing face, his sons as young boys, and their faces full of joy
upon the arrival of “Max,” the family dog.
    Then he took another look at the face