My dad was a mechanic for Trans World Airlines at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. That meant we could fly for free, but there were some catches, guys had to wear suits, girls had to dress up too. We flew space available, on standby, so we might not be able to get on the flight at all. They called us “non-revs” and we were told never to say we were flying for free, so my parents would always remind us in the car how we had to behave. This was back when flying was really expensive and they didn’t want employees embarrassing the airline.

When I was ten or eleven years old, we were heading out to California. To get on a daytime flight, my dad had slipped out of work a few hours early. The guys on the shift always covered for each other so somebody else was going to “punch him out” at the end of the shift.

I liked Boeing 747s, they were big, and smooth, and had a charm other airplanes didn’t have. But nobody asked me and we boarded a Lockheed L-1011. I didn’t like L-1011s, I didn’t have a good reason, yet.

When we got pushed off the gate, they started the engines and started taxiing, everything felt normal. It was when we started the takeoff, I noticed the engines didn’t feel right, then the plane started shaking. I remember looking at the ceiling as the plane was now shaking furiously thinking this thing is going to fall apart.

About halfway down the runway, the pilot slammed on the brakes and we came to a stop at the end of the runway. A moment later, the pilot’s voice came over the intercom and said calmly, the way pilot’s do (they must teach that in aviation school), that there was a problem with one engine and we had to abort the takeoff.

He instructed the stewardesses, that’s what they were called back then, to open the doors and deploy the escape chutes, just as a precaution like it was standard procedure. The guy sitting next to my mom, who had taken his shoes off as soon as he sat down, put them back on in record time and quickly made his way toward one of the exits so he could be first in line.
A minute later he came back, having seen the chutes he grumbled, “I’m not going down that thing,” or something like that as he sat back down.
A few minutes later the pilot came back on and said, “We’ve got the fire under control.” You could feel the word “fire” go through the whole cabin, all of the sudden this was very real. Outside we could hear sirens, but I was too young to really be bothered by any of it, finding it more interesting than dangerous.

The Captain said they are sending some sort of busses to bring us back to the terminal. After a long wait they arrived, they didn’t look like normal buses. They were these futuristic looking buses on scissor lifts that raised up to the plane. The stewardesses were well trained and had us board in groups, I think we had to wait until the second run and then we were packed in.
From the bus I could see the escape chutes. It wasn’t like the movies, they were skinny little things, like a really long pool float, and the plane was high. The first person going down wasn’t sliding, they were basically falling and that was on the good side. On the other side the wind was blowing the chute back under the plane making it useless. The bus ride seemed long probably because it was crowded.

When we got back to the gate, my dad slipped off and put his overalls back on, as they guided the rest of us to a roped-off area. They had trays of drinks, sandwiches and snacks already set up. Everybody feasted on what was there, it was kind of fun.

They started making announcements about getting people onto other flights, even on other airlines. Of course that didn’t apply to us. We were non-revs, so we just sat there and kept quiet. People tried to tell my mom she should demand this or that but she couldn’t say anything.

After about thirty minutes they announced that if anyone wanted a steak dinner, they had vouchers for one of the high-end restaurants in the terminal. One woman shouted out, “Sure, after we ate this crap they’ll give us a steak dinner.” A few people laughed but my mom didn’t. She thought the sandwiches were good, and they got everything together quickly. She didn’t like the woman complaining, but like everything else that day, we kept it to ourselves.

After a while people got tickets for their new flights and they all departed but we sat in the terminal for hours. Being on standby meant we were last for everything. Eventually we got on another flight, this time a proper 747, at about the same time our original flight would have landed in California.

It was a long day.