My near miss aviation story

Considering all the headline plane incidents of late reminded me of my own near miss experience.

Back in 1989 I was traveling home to Australia from LA. I had a direct flight and was waiting in the lounge at LAX for the flight to board, a couple of hours wait.

As it got closer to the flight time they announced that the flight was overbooked and if anyone wanted to get bumped to the indirect flight, stopping in Hawaii and New Zealand, that they would upgrade you to Business Class and give you hotel vouchers or some such.

I thought that was great, so went and lined up.
The queue was long as I was talking to two Australians in the queue while we waited.
I got to the front of the queue and was promptly dismissed as I was on a frequent flyer ticket, they couldnt transfer me, or give the benefits, so I missed out.

I boarded my plane and all was good until we were woken in the night with the announcement that we had had stronger than expected headwinds and we had to land in Fiji to refuel.
Sure, ok whatever, but it all became surprisingly suss when we landed way out in the middle of the paddock and had armed army guards come onto the plane and surround us on the tarmac. The went through the plane top to bottom, looked in every compartment and opened all the luggage doors and went though the hold.

No-one said a word, there was no explanation.

We took off and landed in Sydney a couple of hours late.
We were me at the airport with huge crowds and when I finally got to my grandparents that were picking me up, I learnt that the indirect flight had blown out a huge hole in the fuselage above business class close to Hawaii, and they thought that it was a bombing.

Ended up being the cargo door not latched properly.

That was flight 811.

The people that I was speaking to in line were all dead, sucked out of the plane in their seats. The plane managed to land and almost everyone was fine. I think that six people or so died that night.

If I could have got the seat transfer, I would have been one of the dead.

Yep, it's all crazy odds and butterflies beating their wings.