I fee really sorry for those unfortunate people onboard. That reminds me that I was a very frequent flier in the 1990s. I have seen very tough moments and at least 3 times I had thought that we are going down bad way. It's real chilling when those moments arrive inside the tube.
Once it happened in Saudi airspace just about 12-15 minuted after taking off from Riyadh's King Faisal airport on way to Mumbai (was called Bombay then). Once while approaching La Gaurdia from Chicago, and once after taking off from Houston, Tx, on way to NY... I still remember how scary it was for most of us on those flights. I have seen what a bad turbulence can do. But those moments were far worse. Once the engines were malfunctioning very badly, and for almost 15 minutes until the plane made an unscheduled stop at Dahran, KSA, and we were not sure what would be happening to us almost 30k feet above the earth.
One other time, our fight was caught inside a closing-in dew point over NY, and LaGaurdia was almost to the point of closing for all incoming outgoing air crafts and flights in next few minutes, and so the pilot brought the aircraft down so fast and because of that fast decline, my ear began aching so much that I almost wanted to put my pen inside them to relieve the huge pressure that was built up inside my ears. Those few minutes were as if the excruciating pain was not going to leave me alive... I almost shoved my pen inside the ears. It happened to me the most because cold was built inside me in Chicago where I was walking a lot in almost -18 temperature (December, around Christmas time, 1994). Those tiniest ice particles (present and accumulated over a month in the cold in Chicago before I returned to NY in Jan 1995) in my oesophagus and mouth, and inside my ears behind the eardrums were trying to suck themselves out of my ears from behind the eardrums due to increasing pressure in the aircraft due to the sharp and very fast decline... Those moments, when you can't do anything else, can't run as far as you can from the approaching disaster are real bad... you now can imagine what happens to the passengers who are still alive when the aircraft is falling like a stone and uncontrolled manner... the pressure built up is enough to show them what pain and hell is like...
When I narrate this to my friends, many say that they will take me with them when they are flying -- because I always survive if those things happen. But then I tell them not to crack jokes... they should be careful and very serious about what they say about such things which are not jokes. High up there, you are real helpless...
God give those departed souls your warmest hugs... they need that after the worst experience before they lost their lives. Those last moments must have been like hell... Very Sorry.
