Trans World
When I was nine and my sister Julie was seven, our parents sent us from London to Los Angeles. We were to fly halfway around the world by ourselves – simple enough, no layovers and no transfers. We would step onto the airplane at Heathrow and off at LAX. On our daily commute from home to school, we took two different trains with a change at Liverpool Station and a shortcut through the hanging beef carcasses at Smithfield Market. We did that by ourselves, so why not the flight across the Atlantic? All we had to do was hang onto our passports.
I loved to travel. I loved the sounds and smells of trains and all the busy people locked for a moment in the metal box underground. I loved Liverpool Station, the shops, the crowds, the incomprehensible announcements, the schedule – the feeling of system and organization lay over the chaotic scene. Heathrow was like Liverpool, only more: brighter shops, busier people, bigger machines. I adored it.
As unaccompanied minors, my sister and I boarded first. I tried to hang back and board with the crowd, reasoning that Julie wasn’t an unaccompanied minor because I was in charge of her and I was an honorary adult for the same reason. The stewardess – they called them stewardesses in those days – led us to our seats. She gave us each a pin in the shape of a pair of wings and made sure we knew where the air sickness bags were, and told us to fasten our seatbelts. The rest of the passengers boarded, and the airplane took off and crashed.
It wasn’t much of a crash. The airplane took off in the soft rain, tilted to the left, landed hard, bounced a couple of times, and slid sideways off the runway, where it sank gently into the mud. The airline sent a bus to take the passengers to the terminal, where we sat at one of the gates and waited for something to happen.
Julie and I didn’t wait long. We watched as various passengers set off to find payphones or something to eat, until there were only a dozen left at the gate; most of the stewardesses had left, and the few remaining were clustered at the gate desk. “Let’s go find a telephone,” I said.
We couldn’t find a payphone but we wandered among Heathrow’s shops, enchanted by the luxuries of the duty-free: beautiful bottles on glass shelves, perfumes – we sprayed each other with the samples until the clerk threw us out – leather luggage, fabulous chocolates. Sadly, there were no samples in the chocolate shop.
Just as in Liverpool Station, announcements reverberated through the terminal. We couldn’t understand the echoing words. As we left the chocolate shop, a stewardess from a different airline caught Julie’s arm and said, “Who are you? Where are your parents? What airline are you flying on?”
“TWA,” I said.
“They’re looking for you. Just stay right here.” She pushed us up against the wall. “Stay here and don’t move. I’ll be right back.” She left.
We waited an eternity – at least four minutes – and then I said, “She’s never coming back!” We wandered away. By then, we had realized that we were lost. All the gates looked alike, all the duty-free shops looked alike and we didn’t have the sense to find a TWA desk, or anyone in uniform, and ask for help. Instead, we wandered through the terminal, hand in hand, like a couple of Gretels lost in the woods, Julie crying and me comforting her.
Some Americans found us as we lingered, hungry and forlorn, outside a cafeteria. They fed us doughnuts and sugar. For some reason, the bowl of sugar cubes on the table fascinated them, and they thought we were adorable as we took the cubes and let them dissolve on our tongues. “Stay here,” they said, leaving us with glasses of Fanta orange drink, “we’ll go find someone to help you.” But the combination of doughnuts, sugar cubes and Fanta was too much; unable to find a lavatory, we vomited on a potted fern, and then we left the café, too embarrassed to wait.
Several times that afternoon, well-meaning adults found us but we always had a good reason for not staying where we were put. We thought we saw someone we knew, or one of us needed to pee, or we believed that we’d been forgotten. Finally, some wise person took us by the hand and said, “You girls come with me and I’ll take you back to TWA.”
We arrived at the gate to find our flight being loaded into a new bus. We were to spend the night at the other airport, Gatwick, and take off the next day. The airline paid for restaurants and hotel rooms for the stranded passengers, and the stewardess put us in the hands of an American woman traveling alone, asking her not to let us out of her sight for a moment. She helped us order from the menu, something we’d never done before, and suggested that the people in the room below might not appreciate our flinging ourselves on the hotel bed. “Have you called your parents?” she asked.
“What?” I said. Since leaving the gate to look for a telephone, I hadn’t thought about our parents.
“Shouldn’t you?” she asked. So we did. That morning, our parents had left Heathrow and gone home; their first hint of trouble came when my grandmother called wanting to know why they hadn’t told her our flight was canceled. For the last three hours, our family had been trying to find us; and even after we got to the hotel, the airline hadn’t told them where we were.
The next day, we arrived safely in Los Angeles. But the airline went out of business a few years later. I can’t say I’m surprised.
Sonja Condit Coppenbarger is a musician, writer and teacher in Greenville, South Carolina. She plays bassoon in the Hendersonville Symphony Orchestra, and teaches at North Greenville University and the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities.
