Terrifying flight inspired psychologist
Air Transat Flight 236 was out of fuel and heading for a crash landing in the Atlantic Ocean, and a psychologist on board was about to embrace her future calling.
Margaret McKinnon was on her honeymoon, en route from Toronto to Portugal. It was Aug. 24, 2001, and she was a graduate student in psychology.
Flight attendants rushed to collect breakfast dishes and 293 passengers were told to remove their shoes and grab life jackets under their seats, as oxygen masks dropped.
“The pilot announced he was ditching the plane in the ocean,” said McKinnon. “We were told to get into a crash position.”
A mechanical failure four hours into the flight led to rapid fuel loss. The airbus engines were silent as the pilot prepared to dead-stick the water landing.
And then the pilot announced the coast of the Azores was in view. He sounded surprised. He said he would put it down on a military airstrip. He pulled it off, the wheels catching fire when they hit hard.
McKinnon’s area of research was aging and dementia, but she changed it to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after the incident.
Now a psychologist at St. Joseph’s Healthcare, and professor in psychiatry and behavioural neurosciences at McMaster University, she has been tapped to head a national network focused on research and treatment of PTSD and related illnesses.
The announcement was made this week that she will lead and build the Homewood-McMaster Trauma Research Network, anchored by Mac, St. Joe’s, and Guelph-based Homewood Health. Her title is the Homewood Chair in Mental Health and Trauma.
“It’s exciting, over the past several years we have been working toward a partnership,” she said. “It will bring together unique expertise from leading mental health providers in the region. We can help to create living laboratories to explore questions surrounding PTSD.”
McKinnon said some of the research will focus on understanding physical impacts that PTSD has on the brain, which can experience tissue volume loss in the hippocampus — the part of the brain that helps regulate emotions — following traumatic experiences.
PTSD is a mental illness that affects patients ranging from soldiers who have experienced combat situations, to emergency first-responders, and those who have suffered sexual or physical abuse.
It can lead to feelings of intense guilt, anger and fear, plus other illnesses such as depression and addiction.
McKinnon is a leader in both the clinical and scientific realms of PTSD, said Ron Schlegel, chair of the Homewood Research Institute, in a news release.
“Dr. McKinnon is uniquely equipped for this role and will be leading the development of a national research enterprise that none of our organizations could build alone.”
McKinnon was inspired to focus her career on PTSD by the terror aboard Flight 236 and after witnessing heroic actions of military and emergency personnel who saved them after the harrowing landing.
She authored a study of the mental health impact for passengers, and was treated for PTSD herself.
Answering questions about the flight today, the experience is no longer immediate, she said, but rather a story from her past. But the feeling is not one of detachment, either. It still strikes a chord.
For about 20 minutes on that aircraft, gliding without power, waiting to hit the water, she believed she was going to die. And in that moment nearly 17 years ago, she reflected on a young life, well-lived.