Cathay Pacific plane makes an emergency landing in the middle of nowhere

No one likes emergency landings to happen to them neither the crew nor the passengers as it breaks your otherwise smooth journey into a not so expected detour which can sometime get unbearably painful. Still there are situations where you may end up landing at otherwise full-fledged airports or at times at airports with bare basics but rarely would it be a situation where you would end up landing an island that just houses an air force base. According to Bloomberg, a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Los Angeles made an emergency landing at the Eareckson Air Station, Shemya Island which is about 1,500 miles off the coast of Alaska and is nearer to Russia than it is to the USA but being smack in the middle of nowhere is what makes it like a unique lifesaving piece of land for such emergencies. According to article the 276 passengers and 18 crew on that flight landed without an issue.

Now the island isn’t a very regular destination for flights given that it was last used as a diversion point way back in July 2010, when an American Airlines 777 heading to Tokyo landed with a suspected cargo fire. Apart from that the only flights you would expect to land there are military flights carrying essential supplies and cargo for the island inhabitants which is supposed to consisting of military contractors and armed forces staff. I for one would dread and at the same time be fascinated if ended up landing there. Dreading it because of lack of facilities and that would be very similar to the United flight that landed in Canada making it all the more difficult to provide all passengers with basic necessities hence I would expect it to be a quick trip. Fascinated because it’s right in the middle of the sea and would be a very different cast away-ish kind of an experience. Whatever it maybe but getting stuck due to emergencies is not in our hands, airlines try to do whatever possible in such cases so that such scenarios never happen but when they do they need to place safety first before the comfort.