Everything about Delta Flight #67 was normal and under control. It had flown its route to London Heathrow more times than anyone can count. Mary, Francine, George, Harriet, Frank, and Judy were the evergreen flight attendants for this flight. In its twenty years of operation, Flight #67 never had any delays, mechanical problems, altercations with terrorists, or any other incidents.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Said Captain Irving into the plane’s PA system. “From the flight deck, we’d like to welcome you on board Delta flight 67 to London Heathrow airport. Our flight time this afternoon will be approximately six hours and thirty-two minutes. We are number two in line for takeoff so we invite you to relax and enjoy the flight.”
After a few more moments, the plane lifted off the ground and into the sky, 15 minutes ahead of schedule. What could go wrong?
The passengers on the jam-packed flight had pretty much settled in by the time they flew over upper Nova Scotia. They were either watching movies or TV shows on the flight monitors, listening to music, eating, sleeping or reading. It was a comfortable temperature inside the plane and the air smelled rather stale. Except for the occasional bursts of noisy excitement from the little kids on board, it was fairly quiet and subdued.
All that changed when Captain Irving made an announcement. “Ladies Gentlemen, I’m sorry but we’re going to have to land in Gander, Newfoundland, to conduct an emergency inspection. I do not know how long this will take. But we’ll do all we can to get you on your way as quickly as possible.” The passengers all groaned in frustration, annoyance, and anxiety as they fastened their seatbelts and prepared for landing. Some even looked petrified, almost as if they were about to greet Death.
Once on the ground, everyone started trying to kick back and get to know each other. The plane sat in the middle of the tarmac, forbidding the passengers from disembarking. The in-flight entertainment system had crashed, so no movies or TV were available.
Up in Business Class, Tory Charleton, a British secondary school teacher, sat next to Austin Smith, an American financier. Tory had a thin face with very kind, green eyes, was an average-height brunette and slim. She was on her way home from visiting her brother in Long Island, who had left England after graduating from Sheffield University.
Austin was a burly and muscular forty-year-old bachelor with no desire to marry. He had a shaved head and arrogant look on his face. He worked for the Union Bank of Switzerland as a client representative and was traveling to London to interview potential investors for the bank
“This is a bunch of bollox isn’t it?” Tory remarked.
“What were you saying?” Austin asked, looking up from his phone.
“Oh, nothing. Just remarking how inconvenient this is,” Tory replied.
“I know! I might miss a very important meeting if we don’t get going! But what are you gonna do? I’m Austin by the way.”
“I’m Tory. Lovely to meet you!” The two shook hands.
“So, what takes you to the UK?” Asked Tory.
But, Austin’s phone rang and he talked into it for fifteen minutes. The caller and Austin complained about the airline, cursing a lot in the process. Then the conversation turned to gossip when they began joking about a new coworker. Tory tried to ignore it but couldn’t help becoming quite indignant by the loud and inappropriate conversation.
At that very moment in the Economy Cabin, two college boys named Devon Lircon and Ben Snilarhach were having a ball.
“Remember the time when we went to that party at Kevin’s house?” Devon asked.
“How can I forget?” Ben replied. “You spilled that ‘punch’ all over the speaker system and Scott yelled at you!” The two of them laughed heartily.
“What do you think the parties at Oxford will be like? I hope they party hard! I want my study abroad experience to be worth it!” Ben said.
“I think we’ll be fine. After all, it’s not all about the parties. We have to study, make new friends and learn about the culture.” Devon reminded.
“Now you’re being a stick-in-the-mud!” scoffed Ben.
“Whatever you say.” Devon said, annoyed.
A few rows back, Jake Culvers was trying to get some sleep. He started to put his seat back.
“Hey, you!” snapped Larry Fischer, who sat directly behind Jake. “Don’t lean your seat back in my face! That’s wicked rude!”
“Do you mind?!” Jake retorted. “I’m trying to get some sleep!”
“Well, do it in a way that doesn’t annoy anybody else!”
“Listen, just get off my ass!” Jake said.
“No, I won’t until you get your seat back out of my face!”
Jake said nothing, but gave Larry the finger. Larry stepped up from his seat and stood threateningly over Jake.
Towards the front of the plane, Father Redmond, a Catholic priest, and Mark Gelling, a Lutheran minister, were getting acquainted. This happened to be quite the coincidence.
“Oh, London is not my final destination.” Father Redmond was saying. “I’m continuing to Rome so I could make a pilgrimage to the Vatican.”
“Same here. I’m going on a pilgrimage too, except my destination is Wittenberg, Germany,” said Pastor Gelling. Father Redmond’s face darkened.
“Oh yes, where Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses,” said Father Redmond, somewhat scornfully. Pastor Gelling looked suspiciously at him.
“Do you have something against Martin Luther?” he asked.
“You mean that heretic who gave the church so much trouble with his radical beliefs? No, I don’t have a problem with him,” Father Redmond said coolly.
“Luther’s beliefs were pure genius! He brought Christianity back to us by saying anyone can read and interpret the Bible!”
“Nonsense! The Bible is the word of God. Regular people aren’t enlightened enough to interpret it properly. That’s where we priests come in! We tell them what’s right and wrong.”
“Oh, like saying Mary was a divine being and that the Papacy is perfect?” spat Pastor Gelling.
“Precisely!”
“What rubbish!” exclaimed Gelling, rolling his eyes. “Mary was not a divine being! She lived and died like everyone else! She’s buried in Ephesus. The Pope is not some divine sage either! He’s probably very wise and knowledgeable but he is no better than the rest of us!”
This was too much for Father Redmond. Without any hesitation, he slapped Pastor Gelling across the face. Gelling returned the favor by punching Redmond in the nose.
By this time, things had also begun to unravel up in Business Class. Austin was talking loudly into his phone for the umpteenth time and Tory’s patience had nearly gone. She so wanted to tell him to shut up, but she was too well-mannered for that.
“Oh my God! She did that?” Austin exclaimed. “Well, expect a British woman to make a silly mistake like that!” That was too much for Tory. She was known among her friends and family for a strong and scary temper, not unlike an angry lion. This has been the case ever since she was a young girl, when she flared up quite brutally at her sister for stealing her dollhouse. Tory’s temper was also famous for being very quick acting. She could go from being a quiet and sweet lady to a loud and scary demon in a matter of seconds. In one moment, her animalistic anger took over.
A vein in her left temple started beating quite visibly; her friends and family had always recognized this as a sign of danger. Her nostrils also flared strongly as she breathed heavily. Her eyes glowed like fireballs, looking to burn anyone who came within sight of them to a crisp.
“You racist and sexist bastard!” Tory screamed in Austin’s ear. With that, she snatched the phone, ran past a stewardess, and up to the front exit door. She opened the door with some difficulty and hurled the phone down onto the tarmac, where it shattered beyond repair. Needless to say, this aroused some alarm among the stewardesses. One named Mary rushed to the galley where Tory stood; carrying handcuffs in case the situation became violent.
“Ma’am! You are not allowed to open that door!” Mary exclaimed. “It’s very dangerous!”
“What do I care?!” Tory screeched at the top of her lungs. “That son-of-a-bitch back there said something very offensive into his phone and I administered justice, which seems to be absent in this rusty tube!”
“I understand that ma’am. But you must understand that we have rules and regulations.”
“I don’t give a flying fig about your rules!” yelled Tory. “I want to have some peace and quiet!”
At this point, Austin located Tory in the forward galley. “What have you done with my phone you bitch?!” he cried, a mad gleam in his eyes.
“It’ll be of no use to you now. Not unless you have the ability to glue thousands of plastic pieces together.”
“You little %#@&!” Austin screamed as he grabbed her shoulders and furiously shook her. A few of the other passengers saw this unfolding. Their tempers were already frayed by the delay. They thought joining in the fight would help them let off steam. So, they gathered around to shout in each other’s faces.
Back in Economy, Devon and Ben’s conversation had become an argument over a past issue regarding a lost bottle of bourbon.
“I did not steal it! I was nowhere near that bottle that night!” Devon shouted. “How could you not see it?!”
“Maybe because I was too busy babysitting your drunken ass!” Ben retorted. The people sitting nearby began to take sides in this fight too. Like the Business Class passengers, they were already angry and wanted to let it out. They were yelling and screaming at each other.
Most unfortunately, the fight took place in the aisle and blocked stewardesses Judy and Francine as they distributed snacks and drinks. They attempted to tell the passengers to settle down, but all this did was get them to join the fight. Judy overheard Devon’s accusations and sympathized with him and Francine understood Ben’s defense.
So, they began pulling each other’s hair and biting. Francine even managed to get her hands on one of the boring magazines in a seatback pocket. She rolled it up and started to slap Judy across the face with it. Judy inflated one of the yellow life vests and held it over her head to protect herself.
Meanwhile, Larry’s fight with Jake over his seat back and Father Redmond’s altercation with Pastor Gelling over religion became physical fights, which everyone got involved in somehow. Father Redmond stood up to kick Pastor Gelling in the groin, but misaimed and kicked some random man in the knee. He toppled backward and fell into his wife, who dropped a cup of coffee on another man’s lap. The four of them joined the fight with vigor. A large, teenaged boy leaned forward to punch Larry in the head, but tripped over one of his shoelaces and collapsed on top of an old woman sitting nearby. They started screeching at each other.
Even some of the young children took part in the mayhem. Two five-year-old boys were literally at each other’s throats over a bag of candy one of them managed to steal. A seven-year-old girl screamed at a four-year-old for spilling juice on her glittery shoes.
Not only had the passengers descended into madness, but the plane had become a mess as well. The temperature was stifling and reeked of sweat, spoiled food and an overused lavatory. Candy wrappers, food containers, bottles, magazines and newspapers littered the aisles, causing people to slip and fall. The overhead baggage bins were all open. Coats, bags and other personal items dangled from them like streamers at a child’s birthday party. About 50% of the seatback pockets were torn and their contents lay about the cabin. One TV monitor had been smashed during the carnage and the pieces of Plexiglas posed a threat to any barefooted passenger. The lone sentinel beverage cart stood forgotten in the back galley.
Where were the pilots while all of this was happening? From the cockpit, they could hear the noise level in the plane steadily increase. At first, they pretended not to notice it. The two of them twiddled their thumbs and waited for the OK to take off, for they thought that everyone would calm down once they took off again. But when one of the fights started raging right outside the cockpit door, they found it harder to ignore. Then, without warning, one person involved in the fight somehow managed to knock out one of the surveillance cameras. At that point, the two pilots knew that they had to intervene somehow.
Captain Irving and his co-pilot decided to see what happened. But the instant they went amongst the fighting passengers, the pilots quickly got sucked in. They had unknowingly stepped into the middle of the big fight between Tory and Austin. When Captain Irving tried to restore calm, another passenger slapped him across the face. That, of course, got the captain very angry and he began yelling in the passenger’s face.
Now, the co-pilot had to restore calm on his own. He tried to come between Tory and Austin but could not find a way in. Trying to pull Austin off of Tory was easier said than done, considering how big and tough Austin was. It would have worked nicely but Austin decided to retaliate and elbowed the co-pilot in the face, breaking his nose. The co-pilot did his share of damage when he grabbed an open bottle of wine and overturned it over Austin’s head and expensive Paul Stewart suit.
Finally, a navigator in the control tower radioed flight #67 with the OK to take off and continue on to London. But no one heard it over the cacophony of humanity that had overtaken the plane.
