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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/burnedchain on 2024-09-11 20:26:49+00:00.
For all intents and purposes, I’m not sure how to express my feelings about this experience. I initially thought that I’d keep this story to myself due to the fact that I didn’t think people would believe it. And while that may certainly hold true despite me posting this, this is a story that needs to be told. By the title, you might assume that my experience wasn’t abnormal in any way, or that it was at least incredibly frustrating or anxiety-inducing.
But even then, how is it possible? How does a certified American Airlines pilot land their plane at the wrong airport, and release their passengers like nothing was wrong? Was it even an error on their part, or was it an error on mine? And above all else, what could’ve compelled me to post this story to a place like this? To be honest, other than that last question, I don’t know the answers to these questions, nor do I have any answers to the other mysteries that this story will bring up. What I can assure you of is that this was no normal landing, and this was no normal airport.
It was about three days ago, and I was on a return flight from a business trip in New York. I live in Texas, so you could imagine that it would’ve been a decently long flight from JFK International to DFW. I’d been planning to go home and spend some time with my family, since the trip lasted a little longer than I thought it would. I guess in retrospect, I did fulfill these plans, but nothing could’ve overshadowed the events that transpired on that flight. I’d been, admittedly, scrambling to get a ticket for the return flight since I’m a bit of a procrastinator.
In my luck, however, I was able to get an AA flight from NYC to Dallas, with only 7 seats left out of the 128 total seats on the plane. I got to the airport just fine, I went through customs just fine, and I made it to my gate just fine. By all accounts, this is as normal as a trek through JFK could go, save for my impeccable ability to lazily do everything at the last minute. Once they called my number, and I made my way onto the aircraft, everything proceeded out as normally as it could. I found my seat, stored my luggage, and sat comfortably until the plane took off without any abnormality.
Once we were in the air, everything was, once again, just fine. The food was as bad as usual, the seats were as cramped as usual, and my headphones worked just fine as they usually do. The old lady that sat next to me didn't bother trying to talk to me, and spent the flight reading what looked like some sort of crappy romance novel. The reason I emphasize this is because by all means, this was a perfectly normal flight. There was no indication; no symptom that would have or could have predicted what transpired once we landed.
Due to it being a long, overnight flight, I fell asleep at around 11 a.m. I’m not a heavy sleeper when I'm on anything that isn’t my own bed, so I figured I’d wake up a couple hours before we landed. When I came to, however, we were already descending to the airport. The plane stopped, and stationed itself at the terminal. While somewhat off-topic now, I just wanted to preface by saying that I didn't really pay attention to the surrounding area outside my destination. I'd been on this flight several times beforehand, so I never bothered to get a good look at the outside of the airport.
Getting off the plane was easy enough. Grabbed my luggage. Waited for the people ahead to start moving. Moved towards the plane’s exit. As I carried my fairly heavy bags into Terminal B, the jet lag starting to set upon me, I immediately noticed something strikingly obvious to anyone in the same mindset as I was. Airports aren’t exactly known for being buildings with immense personalities. Many airports use very basic layouts and architecture, leading them to look and feel very similar to each other.
However, if you travel often, you usually take note of the specific layouts and minor details that make the airport you’re traveling from stand out at least a little bit from the rest around the country. They, at the very least, have some sort of iconography and trivia about the specific city or region they're located in. The more you travel around these places, the easier it is to remember certain things about them. This was the same case for me. The reason I state all this is because of the realization I made in that very moment when I stepped into that terminal. Every aspect of it; every minor detail of it made it clear to me that this was not DFW.
I stood there in confusion, wondering if my eyes were tricking me, somehow. After around 10 seconds of contemplation, I came to the conclusion that I was correct. This wasn’t DFW, nor was it any airport I’d ever been to in my life. In pure instinctive confusion, I started walking back towards the entrance to the plane, thinking that there was a wrong turn I could’ve made. I stopped myself, of course, realizing that trying to go back on a plane with the intention of staying on it for the next flight wouldn’t be allowed in any way shape or form.
Because of this, I try to go for my second-best option: finding the customer service desk at the gate for help. However, as I started to look around for it, not only could I not find any such desk existing, the second most perplexing thing I’d noticed so far came into view for me. There were no airport staff anywhere I could see. There were many people, for sure, but none of them had any sort of uniform, badge, or equipment that would make me think they worked for this place. So, I tried asking the other people walking around.
Even if this was completely unfamiliar to me, I could at least be comfortable knowing that I wasn't alone here, right? Well, soon enough, that sentiment proved to be useless here. “Hello?”, I'd ask. “Please I don't know where I am”, I'd say. It all fell on deaf ears. Every person I tried asking just ignored me. Walking on by as if my presence was completely invisible and inaudible. As I stood there and took on that information, I was rightfully weirded out by whatever predicament I’d gotten into. What was this place? What do I do now?
While these questions entered my mind, time stood still in a way. Nothing felt real, as if I were somewhere that didn't really exist. With circulating feelings of perplexion, fear, and a slight sense of dread flowing in my brain, I could only stand there in awe of whatever new world I had ended up in, however mundane it seemed at first. Once I was able to move again, there was only one goal that clutched onto my thoughts, a survival instinct baked into the brain of every human being. Escape. As I clenched my fists with bated breath, I walked forward into a new world I wasn’t completely sure I could leave from.
Despite my earlier grievances with the airport not being what I expected, the airport was relatively normal, on the surface at least. As I trekked throughout the terminal, passing by shops, walkways, gates, it all seemed like it was perfectly fine. Yet, in a way, that sort of mundane normality felt more uncanny than if it were distinctly strange and unnatural. I had never been to this place before, and as far as I knew, it didn’t exist. I had absolutely no idea where I was or what I was doing here.
Eventually, I reached a place I recognized: the entrance where I arrived. I’d fully circled the airport. Despite the fact that I’d loosely ascertained the layout of the airport, I realized that there were still no answers to my questions. While very stupid of me in retrospect, I only realized something important once this thought appeared in my head. My phone. I could look at my location on Google Maps and work my way from there. However, when I acted on this thought and pulled out my phone, it was to no avail. Every app I checked, every online service I tried, nothing would work right.
But it wasn’t just simply that every service was offline. No. It was just that nothing was working the way it should have. When I opened my phone, it turned on and worked just fine. But when I opened Google Maps to try and find my location, the map showed me nothing. Not that the map didn’t load, but all it did was show me an empty, blank terrain. No roads, no towns, nothing. I went to my messages app to see if I could text or call my parents and notify them of everything, to get any sign that I was still on the same planet as them.
But when I attempted to text and call my parents, they never responded. Unread message after unread message. Missed call after missed call. I try to do the same with my other contacts: My sister, my friends, my boss, etc. Still nothing. While I wasn’t entirely sure of the specific time zone I was in, there had to be at least someone I knew that was awake to receive my messages. With this information, I came to the conclusion that not only could I not understand where I was, no one else did either. They hadn’t received my messages, and I was completely, utterly alone.
I had to lean against the wall, and take in my situation. I really didn’t know what to think of this, and in all fairness, I still don’t. “What’s going on?”. “How did I get here?”. These thoughts echoed in my mind, and I felt myself falling into a complete state of panic. However, something brought me out of it. Something I'd initially written off as ignorable, but one that suddenly filled me with curiosity. It was the people.
I didn’t really pay much attention to the people as I was traveling through the ai...
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