I know a little about earthquakes of this magnitude. Back in 1994, a little after 4:30 am, I was in my bed in Sherman Oaks, California, when the Northridge earthquake struck. Within 20 seconds my home became a tri-level. (it was later bulldozed) and more than 160 people died that morning.
Luckily, as intense as yesterday’s earthquake was, the damage was minimal and no fatalities were reported at the time.
Electricity was lost momentarily at the airport, and emergency generators kicked in. When the electricity was restored –just about two minutes later–I fully imagined the airport would shut down. It didn’t. The departures board showed every flight leaving on time.
The only thing that failed: cell phones. The entire system went down. I could get emails on my Blackberry, but no one could get calls in or out.
I went to my gate, and boarding was normal, and on time. We pushed back right on schedule on route to Detroit, or so I thought. Two hours into the flight, the captain announced we had lost a power unit to one of the two engines on board the A319, and we were rapidly descending towards….Memphis.
An unscheduled landing is never pleasant, especially when onward flight connections are concerned. But Memphis is a Delta hub, and the choice was made to land where Delta had maintenance. Either way, this created serious schedule and equipment problems. Our plane would inevitably be taken out of service. It would mean a long delay on the ground, with no guarantee of a replacement aircraft. And no one was interested in touring Graceland.
Instead, since this was the first U.S. point of entry, we’d have to tour U.S. customs in Memphis. For those folks who bought duty-free liquor after security in Mexico City, they were out of luck.
There were long lines at Customs, but even longer lines when we all had to go through TSA security with only one working scanner. It took almost an hour and a half to get through. In the meantime, Delta found another plane, an A320, and got it to the gate.
We reboarded the original Detroit flight. We pushed back from the gate and I landed in Detroit with about 20 minutes to make the Amsterdam connection — with checked bags!
