biyahera : ...OF BIG BIRDS CRASHING DOWN (and so many lives lost)

Eye of the storm ( Glenda ravaging a great part of the Philippine archipelago)

July 2014, the worst time of the world's aviation industry. In just a span of seventeen days, four airplanes carrying passengers of different races met their fatal end and went down in the most horrible way of passing through the great beyond.

July 7. A Vietnamese military chopper doing a parachute training mission crashed near Hanoi, 15 minutes after it took off. 18 passengers perished.

July 17. Malaysian flight MH17 was shot down by a missile while cruising on the war-torn part of Ukraine. The Boeing 777 was carrying 298 passengers on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Nobody survived.

July 23: A TransAsia Airways flight did not make it to safety when it crashed to a residential area in Magong, Taiwan while attempting for an emergency landing due to Hurricane Matmo. Of the 58 passengers, 47 died in the fatal crash.

July 24: Air Algerie flight 5017 lost it's radar contact due to bad weather about an hour after it took off from Burkina Faso to Algiers. The wreckage was found in the Mali dessert. All 116 on board died.

July 15: Daniel Z. Romualdez Airport. An Air Asia Zest Flight Z2-320 braved Typhoon Glenda even if the other airlines have already cancelled all the flights to typhoon-hit areas. The plane took off from the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 4 (T4) at exactly 6:00am. The other passengers of the cancelled flights decided to take the Zest Air flight just to make it to Tacloban. I was one of them.

The flight was very bumpy and turbulent all throughout. Understandably so because we were cruising at Typhoon Glenda's path that was then ravaging Bicol and the rest of Visayas. It was like being enveloped in a colossal mass of fog and blurriness from the time we took off until we arrived to our destination that nearly we were not able to make.

The plane made it's first attempt to land. From my seat (1D), I could faintly see Dio Island, a sign that we are already nearing and circling the airport. I heard the landing gear released for touchdown but then, a sudden tilt of the plane and an abrupt soaring maneuver. It was like being sucked up by a strong current. I felt it, so bad I did not notice that we did not make a landing. The landing gear did not even touch the runway.The sight sent the people on the ground gasping for breath and praying for mercy.

After a good 10 minutes or so, again, I saw Dio island from my window. Fear creeped in. I know something happened. But then, the plane successfully land on its second attempt. A rousing applause from the waiting families and friends on the ground.I was told by a photojournalist assigned at the airport that there was jubilation and clapping all over. The ordeal was over. The pilot safely maneuvered the plane to landing.

A foreigner helping out on the Yolanda rehab in Tacloban and Eastern Visayas made a sign of the cross as we landed. Asked at the airport about the flight, he stated a matter of factly that it was 'a miracle'.

A miracle indeed. I later learned that we were already hitting the middle of the runway when the plane first attempted to land. We could have end up and crashed to the sea if it was not for the pilot's presence of mind and quick judgment.

Kudos to the pilot and the crew. But then again, they should have cancelled the trip just like what the other airlines did.

Looking back, I regretted taking the trip.

The fear, the goosebumps, the haunting faces of loved ones, of lives that could have perished, and the smell...that stinky and putrid smell of death, the flight was not worth it.

It is never worth laying your life when faced with great danger and uncertainty.

It is never worth being included in a tragedy list.

One should never, ever take a risk.