About as rough as it gets

TALK about bad timing.

Yesterday, JetMoney enjoyed a five-and-a-quarter-hour flight of predominantly blue skies and smooth sailing from Reno, Nevada. As our GIV descended for landing at Maine's Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport, we were admiring the picturesque Maine coast when we noticed a fast-moving and ominous storm closing in on our runway.

This was of no concern to us, other than the risk of getting a bit damp on departing the plane. But as we tried to land, things actually got a little hairy. In fact the pilots, when we were at about 200 feet off the ground, were forced to abort the landing and pull up pronto to escape some wild and threatening winds.

All around us was good weather apart from that one black, wet cell which seemed to be localised over the airport. Our plane dropped quickly, and was banking hard to line up with the runway. In fact, we even commented across the aisle to each other on the wild entry, assuming it was to do with the relatively short runway. Suddenly, the plane was hit with a seriously powerful down-draft of wind that seemed to be having a go at slamming us into the tarmac.

Now, those pilots up there were probably completely unphased through all this, but the head guy had to use brute force to pull us up. It didn't happen quickly either. The thought did cross my mind, though fleetingly, that we were cactus. Before long, however, we were back up in clear skies and home free.

My Bloke went into the cockpit to see how the pilots were feeling about the whole thing. They were as cool and professional as ever, as if this happened every day and in fact wasn't even a big deal.

As it turned out, it wasn't. The plane had another hour-and-a-half worth of fuel left, so could fly on to the next big airport at Bangor or just take a sight-seeing tour of the area as we waited for the storm to move on. We chose the latter, and were on the ground without further incident 15 minutes later.

In the terminal, I asked the boss man if, at any stage, he had felt nervous about how things panned out. He hesitated for the briefest of moments before admitting that, yes, he had felt nervous (there must have been a fair amount of adrenaline pumping through his system at the very least). But the whole game-plan had been mapped out with the control tower before landing was even attempted.

"I knew it was all clear out to the right [of the plane], so if we got into trouble we'd be straight back up to 3000 feet," the pilot said. Which is exactly how it worked out.

Not that I was ever really worried about it. I've seen first hand how totally strict NetJets pilots are about their safety procedures. Once, JetMoney was grounded in Paris because two completely unimportant (it seemed to me) computers wouldn't talk to each other. Another time, after refueling at Bangor on entry from Europe, we couldn't take off again because the cargo door wouldn't lock. I didn't argue with them on that one. Who would? You've got to feel pretty comfortable that these guys know best.