Flight 279

This is just a quick short story I wrote on a prompt I found on reddit.

Sitting in seat B7 on Flight 279 on the way back home from my parents lake house in Indiana, my ipod dies and the sounds of a normal plane fill my ear drums. Babies are crying, mothers trying to calm them down, flight attendants are asking rows of passengers if they need anything to drink. I try to go to sleep but the cacophony is keeping my brain awake. I pull my laptop out of my backpack and shove the bag back under my seat. I pull up Chrome and my home page pops up, CBS news. The big headliner reads 'Flight 279: MIA'. My neck snaps up and looks around. Everything seems normal. People are chatting and sleeping.

“I'm on flight 279 right? Maybe not.” I think to myself. I call an attendant over.

“Ma'am?”

“Yes sir, is there anything I can do for you?” she answers.

“What flight number is this?”

“We're on flight 279, why do you ask?”

I push my computer screen down to hide the alarming news.

“My parents were asking me, thank you,” I say, lying through my teeth. She bares a smile at me, obviously annoyed. I can't say I blame her, though. Working on flights, day and night, dealing with cranky passengers. That s**t must be awful.

I couldn't tell her what I had just found out. People would definitely over hear, I learned from the nosy African-American woman in the seat in front of me who apparently had nothing better to do except eavesdrop on my conversation with the stewardess. What do I do? I cant tell anyone. Do I tell the pilot? How would I even get to him? What would he do with the information? How do you bring a lost plane back into the awareness of the air towers?

DING. “Hello passengers, this is your captain speaking, we are going to land in ten minutes. When the seat belt light comes on, please fasten your seat belts and I hope you enjoyed the flight.”

WHAT?! How are we going to land if the plane is lost? What if we crash? What is happening? The light flashes on at the front of the cabin. We all buckle our belts around our waists. I feel the plane descending and I look out the window. Suddenly, the runway becomes clear and I can see the airport. My mind is racing. Is it real? What is going on? We come to a stop and the noise rings out again.

DING. “Thank you for flying with us here on flight 279, I hope you all have a nice trip.”

The light goes off and people are unfastening their seat belts, grabbing their carry ons and exiting the plane. I look around confused, but gather up my belongings anyway. I exit the plane to find my fiancée with stained mascara that once ran down her face was now lazily wiped away leaving streak marks. She's smiling at me and runs to me with arms wide open. I was aghast to what was happening.

“Flight 279...missing...CBS...” I stammered, mostly to myself, trying to figure out what was really going on. She laughed softly, placed her hand on the side of my face, and gave me a quick peck on the lips.

“I saw it too, it was a typo! Flight 289 is missing.”

I pulled the site back up on my phone and sure enough, CBS edited the article along with adding a small paragraph apologizing for the typo. “Someone got fired today” I thought to myself.

Author's Note

Please let me know if you have any helpful ideas or criticism. I wrote this in one morning so I haven't really reviewed it that much. Thank you !