When the captain called the air hostess to the flight deck and we should have been almost on the ground I thought to myself: "There's something wrong with this aeroplane."
The flight from OR Tambo to Kruger Mpumalanga International was supposed to take only 40 or so minutes, so why were we going round and round? Planes don't get stacked at the Nelspruit airport.
A few minutes later, Captain Karen Croucamp informed us that, yes, there was something wrong with our BAe Avro aircraft: the hydraulics were buggered.
We were going to land at Kruger but the landing gear would be lowered much earlier than people were used to and we could be given the "brace" command.
There would be fire engines on the side of the runway, but this was routine. Captain Croucamp and her co-pilot were trained for this. It was all going to be okay.
I was scared but not really frightened. Captain Croucamp was simply that good. If she was this good at dealing with panicking passengers, I reckoned, she was even better at getting planes, even those in distress, on to the ground.
Then we were told that we were, after all, going back to OR Tambo but we had to go right away. We couldn't go at top speed because after all the faffing around those on the ground had done we didn't have that much fuel. We were going to limp home in almost an hour.
In all of this, I was aware of how lucky I was that I wasn't travelling alone, that my lovely colleague Anita was seated next to me. We told each other crappy stories. I told her about all the bad jokes I'd heard at a party the night before. It helped.
We discussed getting on the next flight that night, but we both agreed that all we wanted to do, when this was over, was to go home and to hug our families.
Long before we landed at OR Tambo, we were in the dreaded brace position - the plucky air hostesses droning: "Brace yourself. Keep down. Do not look up.
"Brace yourself. Keep down. Do not look up." On and on it went. It was unearthly, unreal.
I did not dare look up until I realised that the aircraft was very close to a complete stop, the landing near perfect. Then I started that great old South African tradition: clapping for the captain.
On either side of the aircraft were ambulances and fire engines. I don't know how many of them were there, but there were plenty.
And then SA Airlink completely stuffed up. One of their aircraft had just executed an emergency landing after two hair-raising hours in the air. Several passengers were severely traumatised. But how did Airlink deal with it? They tried to pretend it never happened.
Almost an hour after we landed safely, with no explanation, we were herded to another aircraft.
Herding us, like so many cows, was a young woman who had neither the training nor the authority to deal with passengers who had just been through an extremely traumatic experience. It was unfair on her. It was unfair on us.
One of three Tanzanian ladies on the flight was quite elderly. They were all distressed. Like me, none of them wanted to get on another aircraft that night.
Some Europeans wanted to know what Airlink was going to do with them that night. They had flown to a strange country and didn't want to drive in the dark on the wrong side of the road. Sorry, not our problem, said the Airlink supervisor, the flight was taking off "as scheduled".
The supervisor had only come down to the arrivals hall after I insisted that someone of some authority do so. After an emergency landing it took angry passengers to persuade an airline supervisor to get off her arse and come talk to customers.
Is our country going to be ready for 2010? Our stadiums and roads might be, but our airline industry certainly isn't.
Captain Croucamp's behaviour and that of her crew on Sunday was nothing short of magnificent.
The behaviour of SA Airlink - the company - was nothing short of execrable.
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Mommacyndi