So, about an hour into my flight home from visiting my parents, the captain gets on the the speaker and says that we may have noticed the co-pilot going back to check the wing. (I had not noticed and had been living in blissful ignorance.) He went on to say that there was a suspicious bulge in the wing and that the Dallas ground crew had radioed to say they thought our plane had blown a tire on take-off. Nobody knew exactly what had happened but the bulge on the wing could be the result of a blown tire. So now we have two more hours of flight time, during which nobody can do anything except get more tense.
To make a long story short(er), we landed a little rockily, but safely. Everyone was very relieved and there was even a smattering of applause for the landing.
Now, I'm a pretty calm flyer, so I never really got too upset to begin with, but I was very impressed that nobody on our flight freaked out during the two plus hours between the captain's announcement and our landing.
Nobody that is, except the head flight attendant. After we'd landed safely and were taxi-ing to the gate, he got on the speaker, nearly in tears, and started talking about how life is very fragile. He all but begged us to call our loved ones and tell them we loved them. He said he'd probably get in trouble for it (since he always(!) does) but he signed off with "God bless us all {sob}!"
The passengers all just looked at each other in confusion. Seriously, dude, if you get this worked up every time there's a stressful flight, maybe you need to find yourself a new job.
