A SEEMINGLY ROUTINE TRANSATLANTIC AIR VOYAGE turned into a potentially deadly game of Russian roulette, pitting a puny U.S. Airways passenger jet against one of Nature's most awesome forces: bolts of pure, unadulterated lightning.
The plane, carrying eager young students to Italy from Philadephia, took off in weather conditions that were questionable at best. Just ten minutes after take-off, bolts of lightning reaching speeds of up to 100,000mph and with temperatures approaching 50,000 degrees F shot out of the darkened sky, pummeling the pitiful passengers and tossing the mighty air-ship like a child's toy.
"There was silence afterwards," student Claire Davis (Gonzaga), an unwitting passenger aboard the flight later recounted over pizza and wine. "Everyone said 'Did we just get hit?'"
"I wasn't sure what was gonna happen," explained the normally unflappable Brett Kahn (Temple). Did he fear for his life? "A little bit, definitely," he said, adding with admirable candor: "No- I was scared out of my mind."
Kim Maialetti, accompanying her photographer husband Professor Dave, was equally scared. "Oh yeah," she nodded, agreeing with Kahn. "I was praying. One woman was bawling. Another was writing notes to her loved ones."
The plane was forced to make an emergency landing, with the put-upon pilot citing "safety reasons" and "malfunctions". However, the plane was too heavy to land, necessitating some extended circling to burn off fuel. The pilot came on over the loudspeaker with words of assurance as the plane touched down- "Don't be alarmed, folks, if you see flashing lights and ambulances when we land- just part of the procedure!"
The scene in the airport was one of utter chaos as normally civilized human beings turned into savage beasts in mere hours due to stress and exhaustion. "The woman at the counter was trying to console people," Davis said. "She told one woman: 'Ma'am, I know you're tired and hungry, but we're tired and hungry too.' The woman looked at her and said 'Well, we were just hit by lightning!'".
Professor Dave Maialetti saw his laid-back personality take a hit when he overheard the shaken-looking pilot talking candidly into a cellphone. "'We tried everything!' the pilot was saying," he told me. "'The instruments kept failing!' But then he looked me in the eye and said 'You'll get to your destination.'"
Passengers were then herded on to a new plane, with the airline reportedly using scraps of paper as boarding passes.
When the ill-fated flight eventually landed in Rome, the Cagli-bound group of ten found themselves in a new sticky situation as they discovered their bus to Cagli, a four-hour ride away, had left without them. Father Bruno came to the rescue with a hired van everyone piled into, chauffeured by a white-shirted, cigarette-smoking local known as Manuele.
"The ride was compressed and uncomfortable," Brett Kahn told me. "Cosy," agreed Kim Maialetti.
"Oh God!" exclaimed Claire Davis. "The ride into town was just as scary as the airplane!" She recounted a bone-chilling tale of an endless ride through torrential downpours along twisty mountain roads, swerving wildly across slick, unlit byways. "Manuele didn't know where he was going!" the passengers told me. "He had to stop to buy a map, which he read while driving with the dome light on! He just kept saying: 'This weather is-a shitta!'"
That the students survived their flight is incredible. That they survived the ride into town strains belief. But perhaps the most amazing thing, and a tribute to the restorative powers of Cagli, where they find themselves for the next month, is that that night, they all convened over pizza and wine and found it in themselves to smile and to laugh about it all.
Welcome, one and all, to the 2007 edition of the Cronaca di Cagli!
