Turbulence (Writing Excersise)

~ Chapter One ~

   ** IMPORTANT: READ DESCRIPTION  **

BEFORE THEY REALIZED WHAT WAS HAPPENING, it seemed like just simple plane turbulence. They were flying over Britain in the middle of a thunderstorm, almost finished with their trip from New York City's JFK Airport to Paris' Charles de Gualle Airport. As the plane was close to passing over London, they got caught in a violent thunderstorm - although none of the passengers thought anything of it.

Nothing was very special about this storm. Although when lightning struck the plane (They are designed so that lightning will not have a major impact on the actual plane itself), the tail of the plane was struck - the pilots didn't think anything of it now, but they will soon realize how much of an impact this had. They decided to continue on with their pre-planned flight path and fly to Paris as planned.

Just as they were flying over the heart of London, their radar started detecting another plane in their immediate vicinity. They could tell that it was a big airliner like their own, but could not see it out of their cockpit. The storm was still raging outside the plane, further reducing the visibility of the pilots. This was the point when they began to become worried.

As they flew on, the radar kept detecting the other plane. Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, the first officer saw it - a massive British Airways 747 was heading right toward them, at a slightly lower altitude than them, being only around a block away when spotted. She yelled for the captain to pull up, but the pilots of the 747 apparently had the same idea. As the planes drew closer together, the captain's first instinct was to get on the intercom and tell the passengers to brace.

"BRACE! BRACE!" Was what the passengers heard before the collision. The 747 managed to have a large portion of its top and bottom deck destroyed when the other plane - an Air France A380 - had the bottom of its fuselage clip right through the 747. People were sucked right out of the cabin as the British Airways plane lost complete control and began to spiral towards the ground. The planes were at around 38,000 feet, and as it was falling, the plane began disintegrating in midair. Most of the passengers were knocked unconscious immediately from the freezing air and high speed winds.

The A380 kept flying unti it went over the English Channel. At that point, the pilots lost their long battle with the plane and it started to creak - the cockpit cracked and fell off of the plane. As all of the aerodynamic ability of the plane was now lost, it started descending rapidly. The cockpit and the passenger cabin above it were spiraling down until they hit the frigid November waters of the English Channel. As in the 747, all of the passengers were immediately knocked uncocious due to the temperatures and wind speed. The plane was falling like a rock into the water, and there was now nothing that could be done to save it.

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    IT WAS A DISASTER. The world cannot believe what has just happened - 2 state of the art planes have managed to collide and crash. There were 436 passengers and crew aboard the British Airways plane. 568 passengers and crew aboard the Air France A380. The 747 crashed into a busy residential area just outside the City of London. 43 who are in the area at the time perish in the crash and immediate fire of the plane. All in all, 1,047 people are dead in this horrible aviataion accident. It instantly becomes the deadliest aviation accident of all time.

    But there is one major question on everybody's mind - how could it happen?