WHEN comedian Michelle Brasier boarded the plane home after performing at Edinburgh Fringe, she never imagined what was to come. In September 2022, the Australian comic had settled in for the seven hour flight from Edinburgh, to her stopover in Washington DC. After a successful run at the world famous comedy festival, Michelle was riding on a high without a care in the world.
“I’d had a wonderful time doing comedy and tripping over cobblestones,” she says. “I was sitting in a window seat watching a documentary about pandas, when I became aware of the turbulence we were in. “There was a storm outside and the plane was being thrown about.
" Read More on Real Lives Michelle explains that the turbulence then became so bad that the plane felt 'like the cow in Twister.' The pilot announced the plane would be making an emergency landing, as the storm was too dangerous, but as the aircraft attempted to land it totally lost control. The plane bounced, the pilot missed the runway and the plane was forced to launch back into the air.
Michelle, who was sat by the wing, recalls: "I watched it through my window. Most read in Fabulous “The plane struggled against the pull and then it took back off into the air. We were back in the storm.
“The turbulence was violent and there were passengers calling desperately from ahead of me for a doctor, but I couldn't see what was happening up there." Michelle says she was, at that point, surprised she could hear anything - as the noise of people "crying, screaming and praying" was so deafening. But there was absolute silence from one place - the cockpit's passenger announcements.
Michelle adds: “We have no information about what is happening next and so we all start messaging our loved ones. "I message my mum. I don’t know what to say and weirdly don’t want to make a fuss, so I just say 'I love you Mum' and I’m happy with that being the last thing I say to her.
" But Michelle's fears are alleviated when, 20 minutes later, the plane lands safely in Baltimore. “The pilot finally speaks ‘Well folks, as far as plane crashes go that one was a great success’. He laughs.
We laugh but it isn’t funny," she recalls. “I have never been so grateful to be on the ground.” The event, although jokingly referred to by the pilot as a "crash", is more accurately a "go around or a failed landing.
" Michelle says that the ordeal left her with a whole new outlook on life - and led her to a huge decision. She explains: “In that 20 minutes between failed landing and successful landing I had one thought running through my mind, ‘But I am not finished yet.’ “I am not finished being all of the versions of myself, all of the women I thought I had time left to become.
" With one accident in every 1.26million flights, "Flying is the safest mode of transport" according to the IATA. “At this level of safety , on average a person would have to travel by air every day for 103,239 years to experience a fatal accident,” the industry body added.
For the sake of comparison, there were 158 worldwide deaths from aviation accidents in 2022, with more than 65,000 dying on roads in the UK, US and EU in the same year. It also helped Michelle become certain of one thing in her life. “The one thing I will not do is be a mother,” she says.
“I will not sacrifice my body...
for someone else. “My brother died when he was 42 of bowel cancer. I remember thinking he had so many lives left to lead.
And he had two young children. I am surprised I even hear a sentence above the din of crying, screaming and praying “When he was sick, we sat in the back garden watching them play, laughing and smiling and he leaned over to me and said ‘don’t have kids. I love them.
I couldn’t live without them. But do not have them’. “I understand now what my brother meant.
“You put your own life on pause...
it is divine and rewarding but it will exhaust you and test you and rip you from yourself." Michelle’s terrifying ordeal has become the unlikely subject of her show Legacy at this year’s Fringe festival. “I had to talk about it.
I had to share it,” she says. “I wanted to scream at everyone in the audience that their old age wasn’t guaranteed and that they had to stop putting off who they wanted to be. READ MORE SUN STORIES "Because that future version of you can be ripped away in just one storm.
” Michelle Brasier: Legacy will be performed at 7pm in Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Doonstairs) from 31st July – 26th August (Not 14th).
