Day 12.084: Exciting landing

I'm excited to be home, but getting here was a little more "interesting" than I would have liked.

The journey was hitch-free until we were making our turn over Casco Bay:

My picture from a plane over Casco Bay but not from today

Nothing particularly unusual about that - often the approach to the landing is westbound over the bay. Then we turned again. And again. And it was windy and the plane was tilting and dipping and then climbing again.

At around the time that maybe half the people on the plane were wondering what was going on, the pilot informed us that we were holding while they tried to clear a broken down plane from the runway. The pilot mentioned that there was a back-up plan to use the alternative runway but that the alternative one was "a bit short" and since it was gusty, he was going to wait a little longer to see if they could clear the main runway.

So we circled and bounced around some more.

Then he came on again and said we were going to land on the alternative runway. No mention of the length of it this time for this relatively-large-for-Portland jet (Boeing 717), but - of course - we knew.

So, after an odd approach the pilot put the plane down decisively at the end of the runway and immediately committed to some dramatic deceleration. We all held on and...

...then it was over.

Everything was fine and I made my way off the plane and back home.