An unexpected adventure...
We were flying from Lisbon to JFK. An eventless flight on-board TAP, daytime.
Suddenly, roughly 1 hour before landing, the Captain announced:
"Ladies and Gentleman, the Floyd Hurricane that was ravaging the shores of the Carolinas, has suddenly and unexpectedly turned North. All the USA Airports are closed, all the way to Boston and Maine. We have no fuel to return to the Azores. We will make an emergency landing in the closed JFK. We will try to do our best..."
30 minutes later, he started our descent into JFK, an 20', we got inside the Hurricane! I cannot even describe how: the airplane was not flying anymore, it was like a shoe falling on a pit, sometimes like a leave falling from a tree...
"Prepare for landing!" Like a submarine, under water... Suddenly, I could see the runway, and in seconds we landed. At the end of the runway, huge rain fall, and we just stopped on taxiway! Visibility, zero.
JFK Airport send a special elevated truck to get us from the plane.
What a genius, Captain Azevedo was! He was sitting on the truck, and old, bald Gentleman! And the A310, also fantastic...
The, in NY, the rain water was belly deep, we had to carry our suitcases over our heads...
Little did we know, the Storm was lingering there, and we got it again in 2 days, flying Delta to SLC...