By Norris Burkes May 11 2025
Amidst the Cinco de Mayo celebrations last Monday, I couldn’t avoid thinking of May 6, 2009, the day I returned from deployment in Iraq on a chartered World Airways DC-10.
After spending four months serving the wounded at the Air Force Field Hospital in Balad Iraq, my only thoughts on final approach into Baltimore/Washington International Airport, were of home.
Our landing attempt was anything but welcoming as our plane bounced like a porpoise on the waves. Security cameras recorded a large puff of smoke from our wheels. Eyewitnesses would later tell FAA investigators that they thought the plane was going to flip.
A second bounce delivered at an estimated 3.2 Gs and plastic ceiling molding fell on us as oxygen generators swung like piñatas. Several seat backs snapped backward while passengers along the left windows watched the yellow centerline, and I watched our wing drift over the grass.
We sailed back into the air as the cockpit voice recorder captured pilot Craig Gatch asserting: “8535 heavy declaring an emergency go-around.”
When we regained some altitude, my fellow passengers spoke in muffled voices. No one wanted to be the first to cry, but clearly no one wanted to die without protest. Some were praying or holding hands or just staring at their feet.
I rested my forehead on my seatback to pray, even as I wondered if I heard a judgmental voice in it all. My shortcomings felt as though they were being weighed on the scale of a spiritual assayer. Was there a deity somewhere with a one-piece eyeglass assessing my life with a doubtful squint?
Had I been a good husband and dad? Or had I been too absent, physically and spiritually? Was it OK to feel scared? Or should I gather my wits and start a rousing chorus of “Amazing Grace?”
I kept praying, spending the next few minutes asking God, “What about all these passengers?” A soldier was about to meet his new son for the first time. An airman was trying to make a marriage work again. They all wanted another chance. Would they get that chance?
In a center aisle seat, catty-corner from me, a young officer was wiping her tears. I stretched across the aisle to offer my hand as a reminder she wasn’t alone. I wanted to hold it until we landed, but the awkwardly angled reach caused me to break loose and rejoin her hand with the chaplain assistant sitting beside her.
As we reapproached the airport, the flight attendants told us to grab our ankles and lower our heads. Then the pilot added his instruction to “brace for impact!” But instead of impact, we landed as calmly as if we were sailing across a mountain lake.
Slowly we looked up from our crash/prayer position and started clapping like we had never expected another tomorrow.
Before we deplaned down portable stairways, five people were removed for medical care, including the first officer with a broken back. Behind us, debris littered an unusable runway.
Few of us could make much sense of the incident. Many would say to me things like, “Chaplain, we expected to die in Iraq, but never in Baltimore.”
FAA investigators declared the plane a total loss because the main spar was broken, (the structural member that supports the wings.)
This meant our pilot literally risked losing our wings during his 10-minute go-around. But I suppose that’s what airmen mean when they describe a harrowing flight as “flying on a wing and a prayer.”
Even today, my airplane remains at the airport where its continentally stippled for parts. For those curious, click here for the accident report.
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This column is excerpted from my book “Hero’s Highway.”
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