November 1, 2019
Bella shifted in her seat. She looked up from her phone and took a quick glance at the prompter. Her flight, AsianAir Z27124, was on schedule. The flight was set for 7:05 am and it was still 6:30 am.
"We should be boarding soon.", she thought to herself. She glanced around her, making sure that all her belongings were secured. Save for her passport and boarding pass in her hands, everything was tucked neatly into her lone backpack. She was good to go.
A few minutes later, a voice came on the airport's PA system advising all passengers bound for Taipei, Taiwan to get ready to board. Priority queueing would go first and then passengers with seats from Rows 1 to 15, then 16 to 30 and finally 31 to 45. Bella fell in line with passengers seated from 1 to 15 as she had prebooked seat 6C. It was her favorite spot on the plane: Just behind the VIPs at seats 1 to 5 and the first of the pack in normal seating. It was also an aisle seat so she did not have to excuse herself from anyone in case she needed to use the restroom.
Currently, she presented her passport and boarding pass to the ground crew. After a quick scan, the ground crew handed them back to her and Bella made her way down the escalator, falling in step behind her fellow passengers. Passing through the tube, she was greeted by the flight crew. Bella smiled back and made her way to her seat. She stored her backpack in the overhead compartment and snuggled into her seat. She was handed an arrival card which she filled out quickly and stuffed into her passport organizer. While waiting for the other passengers to board, she closed her eyes and hoped for sleep.
Roughly an hour and a half later, just a few minutes outside Manila, Bella woke up to the wiggling and jiggling of the plane. Ugh, Turbulence.
There was a storm somewhere leaving the Philippine Area of Responsibility and apparently, this flight had caught the tail end of it. Bella called on all the saints she knew and prayed for the plane to stabilize soon. She had been in turbulence a few times before. It was almost a generally accepted fact of life when flying. However, just three months ago, her flight back home saw the plane actually dipping down a couple of times at least. That was a smaller plane, this was an Airbus. Still, the wiggling and jiggling was a sign that this was by no means a mild case of turbulence. Struggling to fall asleep again, Bella kept repeating her prayers in her mind. Before she knew it, she was waking up to the plane preparing for its final descent. Soon, she would be in the land of Milk Tea! She was so excited.
The pilots expertly guided the plane towards the tarmac, making a perfect landing that sent the entire plane of passengers into a thunderous applause. Bella could not help but think that it was probably from everyone's collective breath being held because of the turbulence. Now that they had landed safely, everyone could breathe a sigh of relief.
The captain's voice came over the PA system, welcoming everyone to Taipei via the Taoyuan International airport. He continued on to say that they were twenty minutes ahead of schedule and that the weather was expected to be sunny. Passengers were advised to remain seated until given the signal to disembark. He thanked everyone for choosing AsianAir and was looking forward to seeing all onboard again.
Twenty minutes later, Bella and the other passengers disembarked the plane. Slowly, everyone made their way to the immigration counters. Bella followed the signs that led to immigration. Thankfully, it was shown in both Mandarin and English. She entered a seemingly endless line of corridors until finally, she found the right gate. "Well, okay. That was officially the longest walk to the immigration counter I have ever been on." Bella told herself.
