‘Jet terror’not quite how it was portrayed

I UNDERSTAND that literally tens of letters have flooded into the Irish Examiner, expressing ineffable joy at the news that the paper’s soccer correspondent is alive and well and back on terra firma after Monday evening’s heart-stopping mid-air drama which one newspaper dubbed ‘Stan’s jet terror’.

I only wish I’d remembered to be terrified myself. Faced with the reality of impending doom, I might have been inspired to pen the ultimate eye-witness account of a close encounter with the Grim Reaper at 20,000 feet, a Pulitzer-winning screed in which I would grimly detail the hysteria in the cabin as the sobbing stars of Irish football sent farewell texts to their loved ones, FAI officials hastily drafted a statement about aviation “best practice” and problems “going forward” (not to mention downward), and at least one grim-faced journalist spent his final moments doing what comes most naturally in times of crisis — filling in a frankly outrageous expenses claim: “One pair of hand-stitched silk underpants (slightly used). 500 euro”.

Sadly, and not wising to rain on any tabloid parade, but this is how the “terror” actually played out, as seen from the vantage point of Seat 31F.

5.30pm: Plane takes off from Dublin. 10 minutes later, pilot announces a technical problem. There is no danger, he assures us, but they can’t seem to get the landing gear back up. Irish Examiner hack turns to colleague. “Now, I’m no expert, but better the wheel is stuck down than stuck up, eh?”

Plane circles eastern seaboard for about an hour, offering excellent views of the Wicklow mountains, until darkness sets in. Captain announces we are going to land back in Dublin. We do just that. About 20 minutes later, the minor glitch having been quickly resolved, we take off again. An hour later, we have a nice meal. One and half hours after that, we land in Rimini.

Or to put it another way: our flight of horror was finally at an end.

“Stan’s jet terror” may have been good for the reading but it would still have a way to go to beat my favourite airplane scare story.

A family friend, a Catholic priest, was on an internal flight in the US a few years ago. Chronically afraid of flying, imagine his horror when the plane ran into a vicious electrical storm. My man was sitting at the very back, an empty seat beside him, all alone in his paralysing terror and preparing finally to meet his Main Employer.

Then he noticed the air hostess coming down the aisle, struggling to stay on her feet but spreading words of calm and assuring the frightened passengers that the plane was fine and would be out of the worst of it in just a few minutes.

Reasoning that she was the professional in these matters, he suddenly found his terror evaporating. Confronted with his ultimate nightmare scenario, he now knew that his fear of flying had been conquered and would never trouble him again.

Dizzy with a sense of the miraculous, he decided he had to express his gratitude to the hostess. At which point, she arrived at the back of the aircraft, practically jumped into the vacant seat beside him and, in an urgent whisper, declared: “Father, I’m a Catholic, will you hear my confession?”

Happily, they all lived to tell the tale.

As did those of us who are now finding repose in the serene mountain Republic of San Marino, a little oasis of sanity encircled by the footballing desert which is currently Italy after those shocking events in Sicily.

Actually, truth to tell, we’re not really in San Marino at all. But our base in Rimini is only a 45 minute drive away from the venue for tonight’s game, which allows for the novel travel experience of journeying from one country to another by taxi.

We made that trip yesterday to the San Marino team hotel. But, make no mistake, San Marino is an independent country, steeped in history, and her footballing sons are proud of the fact. Yesterday, I asked the team’s only professional – captain Andy Selva of Serie C side Sassuolo Clacio – to nominate his best moment in the national team’s colours.

Via a translator, he said that it was scoring for San Marino in their 1-0 friendly win against Liechtenstein.

“It was our first victory ever,” he explained. At which point, coach Giampaolo Mazza interjected with a smile: “And our only one.”

San Marino may not have the quality to aspire to anything more in tonight’s match against Ireland than the coach’s expressed target of “scoring one goal and conceding one less than we did the last time.”

But the players will represent their tiny country, as they always do, with pride and passion. And there will be an added emotional element to tonight’s fixture for the home team. It’s their first outing since the tragic death in a drowning accident in Mexico of 24 year old Federico Crescentini, a sub who came off the bench to play for his country in the last soccer match at the old Lansdowne Road. He was also a nephew of the San Marino FA President Giorgio Crescentini.

All of which leaves us to note that sometimes there is tabloid horror and sometimes there is the real thing.