Expert

Yesterday was our flight back from Goa to freezing Delhi. We took an afternoon flight so that we could avoid arriving at night in case there was fog. But even with the best plans, we still arrived at 9PM.

Our flight left a little after 3PM with an announcement "another on-time departure for Indigo Airline." It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm. We flew out over the ocean. The plane made a few weird noises, but nothing alarming. About 10 minutes into the flight I looked out and thought about what I was seeing. We were still only about 5000 feet up. I know that from my skydiving days when we went up to 10,000. Anyway, I thought to myself, "This seems odd. Why aren't we higher?" I thought about it a while and then told Steve that we were still pretty low and didn't seem to be going North. He wasn't concerned and just went back to reading. Then it occurred to me, "I don't think I heard the landing gear come up. I bet that is the problem." So I told Steve my opinion and said, "Of course, I'm no expert."

We landed without any announcement about what was happening. I suppose if you weren't looking out the window you would have been surprised at what was happening. Nothing about making sure your seat is up and the tray table and all that. We just landed. We were back where we started. We parked by the Air Force planes and I thought, "This doesn't look good. Maybe it is a security issue. If it was a problem with the plane they would probably tell us. But if it is a security issue they wouldn't want a panic, so they wouldn't tell us." Luckily, the flight attendant got on and told us there was a technical problem so we had returned.

We waited on the plane for an hour or so. They gave us sandwiches and made us buy our coke, but they did open the door and hook up the stairs so that people could step out. It was actually quite pleasant in the plane. We three read our books. Finally we were told that the problem was that the landing gear could not be raised so they were trying to fix it or else bring in another plane. So it turns out that I am an expert after all.