by Otniel Tamindael(ANTARA News) - Some 228 people step into Air France Flight 447 at Rio de Janeiro airport in Brazil for a journey to Paris, France, unaware it is to be their last one on earth.
Moments after the Air France jetliner has reached cruising speed, the passengers` faces which looked cheerful at take off turn pale and tense.
Panic, fear and bewilderment strikes them like a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky after the aircraft is hit by a fierce storm over the Atlantic Ocean and loses contact with air traffic control.
The AF-447 Airbus A330-200 disappears with 12 crew members and 216 passengers from 32 nations on board, including 61 people from France. There were no survivors in the air crash.
Jopi Pelealu, an Indonesian national working for an oil company in Brazil, who would have been among the passengers of the ill-fated plane but he had a sudden change in his travel plans.
The Indonesian was given leave from his work and he had planned to use the opportunity to visit his family in the West Java town of Bekasi.
He had already bought an Air France ticket for a seat on flight AF447 which was to take him from Rio to Paris enroute to Jakarta on Sunday, May 31, 2009.
But the day before Pelealu was due to leave Rio, his boss called asking him to cancel his travel plan and stay several more days to do something important for the company. He could make the trip to Jakarta a week later, his boss said.
Pelealu was really disappointed but did what his boss had requested. Never did it occur to him at the time that the disruption in his vacation plan later proved to be a savior in disguise.
"I was then disappointed beyond measure as I was asked by my boss to cancel my ticket, but later, after I heard about what had happened to the Air France plane, I recognized the truth of the saying `a man can plan according to his heart`s wishes but it is the Lord who has the final say," Pelealu said in his personal testimony at a Sunday service in Bekasi.
The father of three children said that if he had been on AF-447 as he had planned to be, he would obviously have been in eternity and unable to meet his family again.
"Life is a glorious opportunity if it is used to condition us for eternity. If we fail in this, though we succeed in everything else, our life will have been a failure," the born-again Pelealu said.
The Air France jet disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean with no survivor but by an unexpected turn of events he escaped a terrible fate.
He said "most of us perhaps are familiar wihh the devastation one can feel by the sudden loss of a close friend or relative as is now being experienced by the friends and families of the ill-fated Air France passengers."
"And this vividly shows that the rich with all their wealth cannot buy a reprieve from the death sentence that hangs over all men, and the poor cannot beg one extra day of life from the `grim reaper` who pursues every man from the cradle to the grave.
"We never know when our moment will come. Tragedies such as plane crashes, tsunami in Aceh, floods, and earthquakes should help us realize the uncertainty and brevity of life , and our need to be ready to meet our Maker at any moment," Pelealu said.
For him, believers have no immunity from death and no claim to perpetual life on this planet, for death is to them the beginning rather than the end, and another step on the pathway to heaven rather than a leap into a dark unknown.
Although it had disappointed him, the cancellation of Pelealu`s plan to fly on Air France Flight 447 from Rio to Paris proved to be a blessing in disguise, and had given him another opportunity to meet with his beloved wife Aike Pelealu, his daughter Cynthia, and his two sons Daniel and Kennedy Pelealu at their residence in Vila Indah Permai housing complex in North Bekasi sub district a week after the tragedy.
Meanwhile, Cynthia had another story about her father and mother.
She said when her father was away in Brazil working, her mother Aike had to make tremendous adjustments.
"Daddy is the sole bread winner but he works so far away from us, his children, and therefore Mama had to assume the responsibilities of a father," Cynthia said, adding that her mother`s constant morale booster was the words, "With God in the vessel we can smile at a storm."
To that end, Cynthia said, they had regular family altar sessions which laid the foundation and pattern which they would later emulate with their own families.
During those precious times of prayers, answers were given. Pelealu had an opportunity to take leave from his work in Brazil and return to Bekasi, West Java, to be reunited with his family.
"The reunion with papa brought excitement and relief. There was tremendous joy as we embraced each other in the assurance that "hitherto the Lord has helped us,`" Cynthia said.
"There were tears of joy, too, because love and togetherness produce an inner warmth that cannot be extinguished," Cynthia said.
Air France Flight 447 was a scheduled passenger flight from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France that went missing on June 1, 2009 over the Atlantic Ocean with the loss of all 228 people on board.
The aircraft, an Airbus A330-200, took off on May 31, 2009 at 19:03 local time (22:03 UTC).
The last contact with the crew was a routine message to Brazilian air traffic controllers at 01:33 UTC, as the aircraft approached the edge of Brazilian radar surveillance over the Atlantic Ocean, enroute to Senegalese-controlled airspace off the coast of West Africa.
Forty minutes later, a four-minute-long series of automatic radio messages was received from the plane, indicating numerous problems and warnings. The aircraft went missing shortly after it sent the automated massages. (*)
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