36000ft From Safety

The cockpit

Despite them being fired at no one in particular, it wasn’t enough to keep everyone seated and calm, as screams (mostly from the ladies) filled the jet.

Being the opportunist I am, I seized the moment to make one of the most risky decisions I’ve ever made, I took advantage of the raging calamity and cautiously dropped on all four and carefully crawled on the floor headed for the cockpit.

My heart was resonating inside my chest, knowing that the slightest mistake would literally kill me. If this wasn’t a life or death situation, I am pretty sure that a 42 year old wearing a baggy suite, crawling on a plane would be a comical scene.

As I was about to reach the cockpit door, another gunshot fired. Alarmed, I quickly stood up, ran into the cockpit and hurriedly locked the door behind me. I made it I thought to myself as I took a grateful glance at the cockpit instruments.

My excitement was quickly diluted by a sudden sharp pain in my abdomen. As I investigated the cause, I was awestruck. The gunshot earlier had been aimed at me. I had been shot!

I knew I had to calm down to prevent excessive bleeding, but it’s almost impossible when a bullet is deep in your flesh. I hurried over to the controls and as I looked around I was very grateful that the hijackers hadn’t switched off the transponder.

The instrument helps air traffic control (ATC for short) in monitoring our speed, direction, altitude et cetera. I quickly put on the headpiece to contact ATC and notify them that we were literally 36000ft from safety.