Local teacher endures transatlantic scare.
Elizabeth Friary was fast asleep.
The Santa Fe Prep English teacher had left London's Heathrow Airport Aug. 7 on American Airlines Flight 109 more than two hours before. Now the steady hum of the Boeing 777 had lulled her into a slumber.
Friary had been visiting a friend in Oxford and was on her way to Boston. Then the passenger next to her shook Friary awake.
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The captain came on the intercom
and announced something had happened in Boston and the flight was being diverted back to Heathrow.
"I immediately assumed there was a terrorist attack in Boston," Friary says. "My family is there so that was on my mind the whole time. Those two hours back to London were the longest I've ever spent on a plane."
Nothing had happened in Boston. A passenger on board had been flagged on a "no-fly" list used to monitor suspicious individuals, according to American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner. "Once that was caught, the flight returned so it could be dealt with in London," Wagner says.
The plane's television screens went dark. Flight attendants swept through the cabin disposing of drinks. Passengers were told to remain in their seats and could only use the bathroom with a flight attendant escort.
"But they were very clear that we were safe on the plane." Friary says. "There were 240 passengers and nobody panicked. The crew did an amazing job keeping everyone calm."
Friary says she had familiar feelings of confusion and foreboding.
"I felt very much the same way I did on Sept. 11," Friary says. "There was that same feeling of not knowing what was going on. It felt very surreal."
The plane landed at Heathrow and parked on the tarmac. Armed policemen boarded the plane and quickly escorted a man and three female companions off.
Friary was back in Boston by the time 24 suspects were arrested Aug. 10 over an alleged plot to blow up US-bound flights.
"Once everything came out in the news three days later is when I started feeling a little funny," Friary says. "I was more scared when I flew from Boston to Santa Fe a week later than I was on the flight back from London."
By that time, Friary had heard rumors that the man apprehended on her plane was using Flight 109 as a practice run in the bombing scheme and that authorities had discovered explosive materials in the man's luggage. Those rumors have since dissipated.
"My understanding is that the person and his accompanying family were questioned and released," Wagner says. "It's certainly coincidental that the incident occurred in London around the time of the arrests, but the two are not connected."
Friary is happy to get back in the classroom and put the scare behind her, but the incident lingers.
"I was living back East on Sept. 11 and that definitely had an effect on me and a lot of people I know," Friary says. "This wasn't a turning point for me. But, at the same time, it's pretty scary to think about what could have happened."
