Ready, Set….WAIT! Our Flight To Florida

Ok...here is the good news. 2010's airline accident rate was the LOWEST in aviation history. Reason to rejoice right?

It was a week ago Saturday, Corinna and I were boarding a jet for an uneventful non-stop flight to Florida. Luggage checked, carry-ons in the overhead compartment, or stowed under the seat...seat belt fastened...flying time to Florida, about 3 hours.

Heading down the runway like a bus being driven by Sandra Bullock...no problems ready to take off and "thud, thud". What was that? Did we hit something? Was it luggage shifting? Then the pilot hit the brakes...reversed engine(s), and we're stopped.

The pilot comes on and says, sorry folks, we had to abort our take-off, the noise you heard was in the left engine, and maintenance has to check it out. Back to the terminal. I never really felt nervous, didn't have time. Then the announcement, our "plane is broken, and not going anywhere". We had to wait for another plane, 8 hours. Hey but at least we didn't take off, and we didn't run out of runway. Eight hours later we were on our way to a beautiful week in Florida, with 2 free round trip airline tickets for the inconvenience.

I told the pilot that he did a great job on the aborted take-off and the uneventful one. He smiled and said, "that is what we're trained for."