A tale of two AirAsia flights

Just minutes before we were supposed to board our AirAsia flight from Manila to Kalibo, Aklan, on Tuesday, December 30, for a much-needed year-end holiday in Boracay, I was still hunched down over my laptop, working with our team in Indonesia because reports were breaking that the missing AirAsia flight in Indonesia had been found.

I spent the last three days coordinating Rappler Indonesia’s coverage of AirAsia flight QZ8501, and in fact had just posted the news that a “search plane spots ‘shadow’ on seabed believed to be AirAsia jet” on our live blog, when we were told our plane was ready to leave.

So I’m following the #QZ8501 news while sitting on an #AirAsia plane delayed because of very bad weather #SeniangPH

— Jet Damazo-Santos (@jetdsantos) December 30, 2014

Our flight was already almost two hours delayed by then. Typhoon Seniang had storm signals raised over parts of southern Philippines, and amid all the QZ8501 news, I didn’t realize that Storm Signal No. 1 was raised over Aklan.

In the plane, the pilot apologized for the delay and told us a Cebu Pacific flight was still waiting to land at the Kalibo Airport. A few minutes later, he said it was forced to return to Manila.

We thought our flight would get cancelled, but were happy to be told later that the flight was ready to proceed.

There was some turbulence – which was not unexpected because of the bad weather but enough to stop flight attendants from selling food to passengers – but there were no indications the flight would encounter problems.

That was until the landing. It was hard and fast and ended abruptly. The engine was immediately shut off and emergency lights turned on. That was really my first clue something was wrong.

We could barely see anything outside the window, though some passengers started saying the plane appeared to have overshot the runway.

Nobody was panicking, though, which made a flight attendant’s call for people to remain calm seem out of place. There was no official announcement about what happened, just the flight attendant asking us not to get our bags and to “deplane at the back.”

It was only really when I was near the exit that I realized what had happened. (READ: AirAsia plane overshoots Kalibo runway)

“Bilisan po natin! (Hurry up!),” a female flight attendant standing near the door said, urging us to rush out.

Then I saw the emergency slide. And the grass below. And emergency crew behind it.

As soon as we slid down, we all ran across the wet grass to the windy tarmac, past a fire truck on standby near the plane.

Airasia plane overshot runway at kalibo pic.twitter.com/6E4hWUJbS0

— Jet Damazo-Santos (@jetdsantos) December 30, 2014

There were moments of confusion – passengers not knowing where to go or what to do, a lack of appointed AirAsia spokesperson early on – but overall the situation appears to have been handled relatively well. I was pleased to find nurses checking on elderly people at the airport lounge, and airport staff rushed to find a vehicle to take a passenger to the emergency room because he had an elevated blood pressure. 

Elderly passengers of AirAsia flight that overshot runway at Kalibo getting blood pressure checked pic.twitter.com/Lyr15BzSMX

— Jet Damazo-Santos (@jetdsantos) December 30, 2014

When I asked an AirAsia staffer about what caused the incident, she said it was because of strong winds. But there was a lot of talk among passengers that the pilot should not have forced the landing. I’m no aviation expert, so I don’t want to speculate on what should have been done.  

As I’m writing this, we’re still stuck at the airport lounge in Kalibo, as boat trips to Boracay were cancelled at 6pm. All hotels near the airport are also now full of passengers also unable to go to Boracay, or fly out because our plane mishap led all flights to and from Kalibo being cancelled.

It’s not quite the start to the holiday I expected, but “at least we’re safe,” my husband said. – Rappler.com