my near death experience

Flying is the scariest thing in the world. After almost 12 hrs of being on different airplanes I can safely say that it was bad! How bad you may ask. Well….I will tell you. To begin with I got to the airport and waited 1 hr on the queue even though I was the third person on there. During the almost hour long wait there with this 3 year old girl who would scream at the top of her lungs for no apparent reason. She was what you call a total brat. Her mother nor her mother’s friends could control this horrible creature. Makes you think twice about even having one. Anyhow, by the time I was called forward to check-in I had a massive headache and wanted to strangle that freakin little girl. You might say I am insensitive but you weren’t there. She went on to do that same thing at the boarding gate. Was like being in hell. When I was checking in I was told that the flight would be delayed by 30 mins, which later went on to be 2 hrs delay. There was a very serious looking Italian sitting next to me and twards the end of the flight I asked him something and he ended up being quite nice. He told me that apparently Alitalia employees were on strike so that is why the flight was delayed. As we were landing I realized that there was a lot of lightening in the clouds very close to the plane. It freaked me out a bit but tried not to let my imagination get too wild. 15 mins into the landing the turbulence got BAD, very bad! To a point that when we were a few minutes to the ground the airplane seemed like it was going side to side and rocking all ways, so scary….and we landed but it wasn’t at all nice. Bearing in mind that I had 2 hrs to connect this time was no longer existent. I had to basically get out of the airplane, which to my luck meant walking down stairs and getting on a bus that took 10 mins to just pull away from the airplane. Then walk for like 20 mins. Ridiculous. I figured since it was 9:53 by that time I should probably run to my gate (C27….that probably doesn’t matter to you). But to my alarming surprise I was going to have to take a shuttle rail to the C terminal. GREAT!!! I was sweating by then….and my heart pounding, horrible. By the time I got off the rail shuttle it was already 10pm. I ran like a mofo to the gate….where a very nice Italian lady was screaming at me to hurry up….imagine how pissed off I was by then. I yelled back, IT ISNT MY FAULT! And I think she realized I got a litltle mad so she was nice after that, the walk to the airplane seemed like forever as well. As I walked in the cabin I got the most horrible stairs and laughs. Cause I was basically sweating and winded from running with a 20 kg bad on my back. When adrenaline kicks in I think most of us can do things we never imagined. As I sat down and organized myself I realized that the airplane wasn’t going anywhere, we sat around for another hour. Since so many flights were delayed we ended up leaving an hour and 15 mins later form Rome. Everyone was pissed off and cranky. Got the typical Brazilians that clapped and screamed when we started moving away from the gate. Kinda embarrassing. During the flight it was pretty bumpy, but nothing like the previous flight. As the flight attendants were serving the food, I watched sex and the city (yes again) and I looked around and all of a sudden I look up between the overhead lockers and smoke was everywhere. Everyone was looking up and even the flight attendants were looking up and looked a bit puzzled. I got soooo scared, I thought we were going to start nose diving down onto the earth. Sure that the airplane was on fire or something, I take off my headphones and look at the guy sitting next to me and he started laughing. My face was as white as a sheet of paper and my mouthe wide open. I look at the flight information and I see we are just above Algeria or something….so I figure at least we wont land on water and die drowning. I imagined lost and movies started going thru my head. I was sure I was going to die. The guy next to me starts laughing and I ask him what the smoke was. To which he laughed and said no that is the air conditioning. I couldn’t smell smoke so I believed him. After that I felt happy to be alive. It is true that when you think you are going to die that all these things flash in your head and you feel so helpless being on an airplane. I started crying later cause of it all and leaving London. Horrible.