Musings at Altitude

As we pulled away from the gate today, I faded off to sleep like I always seem to do at the beginning of any of my travels.  It doesn’t matter what time, what time zone, or what my state of sleeplessness  – I just always seem to be lulled into sleep as the plane pulls back from the gate.

At some undetermined point during our ascent, I woke up to my neighbor aggressively agitated and digging for her headset.  I found out later she was desperate to tune to channel 9 and listen to the pilot communications which is typically provided on United Airlines – but it was eerily silent today.  At the same time, I recognized the wrongly timed sound of rapidly flowing air coming from the under-carriage of the aircraft.  I quickly looked out the window and noticed we were incredibly high for such a sound.  I was starting to shake off the sleep, and I felt the weightlessness that comes when the plane quickly transitions from rising to falling in a split second of time.  I looked right in my somewhat sensory blur and I saw a lady on the opposite window still sound asleep – that seemed really strange with the noise.  The two guys behind me to my right kept chatting away seemingly unaware or unconcerned by the incredibly loud noise that shouldn’t have been – that seemed incredibly strange too. 

I could sense the aircraft struggling to climb, and I also could sense the disruption in airflow caused by something obviously not being perfectly sleek on the air frame.  The disturbingly loud noise and the abnormal turbulence lasted for no more than a couple minutes, but those couple of minutes seemed like an eternity.  Then, the noise slowly quieted and the turbulence slowly eased.

As I looked around the cabin and watched the tension noticeably ease, I heard the dual tones of the flight attendant phone and watched the purser talking to the pilot.  As she listened on the phone, I kept glancing around the cabin and saw that all of the passengers were now alert and anxiously waiting for any news of what had happened.  After she hung up, she seemed to be collecting her thoughts, and then she picked up the intercom to finally make an announcement to the passengers:

“I know you were worried.  I was too.  The pilot just called me to let me know that the sound you heard was just him trying to cool off our brakes which got too hot during the take off roll.”

What a bizarre explanation!  In fact, I’m still pondering what she said.  I’ve flown over 1.5 million miles in my now anxiety shortened life time, and I can honestly say I’ve never had the experience of cooling off the brakes well into an ascent.  I’ve heard similar sounds when a pilot kept raising and lowering the landing gear because the gear wouldn’t stow right.  And I’ve evacuated an aircraft very rapidly when we landed and the brakes caught fire.  But I must admit, this is a first and I’m just a wee bit mystified at why the brakes would need to be cooled off that far into a climb after takeoff.

Unfortunately, from that point forward through the rest of the flight the senses were finely tuned as I listened, felt and watched for anything out of the ordinary – it was really hard to relax.  One of the first questions that popped into my mind was what was going to happen when we landed on a fairly short runway when we reached our destination if indeed the brakes got hot during take off.  It sure seemed likely that we’d need lots of brake at our destination. 

Over time, several passengers made some light jokes about their anxiety, but you could tell that the mood of the plane was quite a bit different now.  Even the flight attendants realized that for those brief couple of minutes, anxiety was high and fear filled the plane.  In response to that anxiety, they made the drinks on the house and they quickly ran out of beer because of it.

I’m very glad to say that the rest of the flight went flawlessly and the landing even with intense braking went beautifully.  But I’m still left wondering what the real story may be…there must be some other explanation for this.