On Board Flight JQ458

• Corey Newbold, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2014

It was an undisturbed and extremely clear day with hardly any headwind boarding the Jetstar flight JQ458 from Sydney at gate 32. It was 10:03am when I was boarding the flight with hardly any delay of planned 10:00am. I was in seat K1, directly above the wing with a clear and concise view of the absolute monster engines. The Jet was an Airbus A320 owned by Jetstar and was flight JQ458 departing from Sydney to arrive at Brisbane airport on runway 90.
The flight attendants were telling us to put our seat belts on and enjoy the flight over the microphone. It was a long enough trip just to get to runway 360 via the taxi lanes. Then the seat belt sign went on and we departed from Sydney airport. The plane reached extreme speeds before getting airborne and was climbing to 38000 feet. Just 9 minutes into the flight just before 11:00am, BANG. BANG! It was like thunder just 100 times louder. I looked out my window and noticed that the engines were going on and off simultaneously which is almost impossible to fly an airplane under these circumstances. Then the captain made an announcement “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking we are having difficulties with both engines and are hoping to be on the ground as soon as possible”. There was complete pandemonium in the cabin with people panicking. The engines were no longer running and we were now gliding at 35000 feet. Then the captain came on again and said “We are still expecting heavy turbulence and we have shut off both engines as there is a high chance of a fire, we will be gliding over Newcastle in less than 5 minutes if we make it to the airport, as all of the computer systems have failed we will be doing a manual landing instead of an ILS landing, good day”.
Then at 11:06am we went into a nose dive and were falling 3000 feet per minute. We were plummeting towards the ground. Thanks to our pilots, with more than 25 years of aviation and quick thinking they pulled us out of the nose dive before it was too late. We were now gliding 100 kilometres south of Newcastle airport. The pilot came on the microphone again saying “We are making an emergency landing and are expecting to be touching down in less than 5 minutes.” 4 Minutes later tension was really building up in the cabin, people were screaming along with people frustrated and filled with hope. We would have only been a couple of hundred meters up from the ground. Then the flight attendant came on the microphone once more and said brace for impact” and then she was yelling “Brace brace brace” simultaneously. After 20 seconds we were now slowing down. We came to a halt and there were people clapping and shaking hands with people around them.