![]() ![]() ![]() Six of those interviewed exhibited PTSD symptoms. McKinnon and collaborators examined the memories for 15 passengers on the flight, comparing their recollection of three events: the flight itself, an emotionally neutral event from the same year, and their experience during 9/11, the following month. “We wanted to take this opportunity to look at a very ‘controlled’ circumstance, so to speak,” says McKinnon, suppressing an awkward laugh at using “controlled” to describe AT 236’s emergency descent. So McKinnon decided to delve into the memories of her fellow passengers on Air Transat flight 236. Other studies have found that recollection of traumatic events can be very impoverished and fragmented, with “a detail here, a detail there, that don't really fit together”, she explains.įew studies have looked at memory during the experience of trauma itself, especially for a single, shared event. It's very vivid, people recall many details, and people don't seem to have difficulty remembering,” says McKinnon. “Some studies have found that during the recollection of traumatic events, recollection is enhanced. The link between fear and memory has intrigued researchers and clinicians for decades. And if they can understand why trauma has such a profound and lasting effect on us, perhaps they can find ways to help people cope better with the aftermath. In recent years, she and a number of other researchers have been trying to understand what makes fearful experiences seem to become imprinted so deeply in our brains. The experience inspired McKinnon, now a clinical psychologist, to study what trauma does to the brain – how it changes what we remember and why some people experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). For some – including McKinnon – the terrifying experience replayed vividly as intrusive memories and nightmares in the months that followed. Two serious and 16 minor injuries were sustained during evacuation down the chutes, but all 293 passengers and 13 crew survived.īut for many the flight didn’t end there. The stunned passengers and crew descended escape slides and ran across a field to a safe distance, towards American soldiers with guns. Following a harrowing 360 degree spin and several sharp turns to reduce altitude, the crew shouted “brace, brace, brace” as the officers brought the plane to a bumpy landing. The pilots had established contact with Lajes, a joint military-civilian air base. It was the Azores, an isolated archipelago some 850 miles (1,360km) off the Portuguese coast. “They were shouting that we would be ditching into the ocean,” McKinnon recalls.Īfter a half hour of preparing for the worst, McKinnon recalls somebody yelling that they’d made it to land. The plane’s systems had shut down after a catastrophic leakage of fuel. ![]() Crew instructed passengers to put on their life jackets. “I didn't really understand at the time what that meant,” she says. She remembers thinking it seemed early to be arriving in Lisbon. Returning to her seat, the crew served breakfast, but then announced that they would be making an emergency landing. ![]() “It seemed odd,” she says, but she didn't think a lot of it. As Air Transat flight 236 soared over the mid-Atlantic, McKinnon went to the lavatory. After boarding their flight in Canada on the evening of 23 August 2001, newlyweds Margaret McKinnon and her husband were heading for Lisbon, Portugal. ![]()
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