About a plane, a year ago

[kate_schaefer]

Now that I've found that notebook (to be precise, Glenn found it, after I speculated about where and when I might have lost it), I'm going back through the entries. Here's one, as we landed in Minneapolis on our way back to Seattle from Wiscon in 2010: 

Seeing another plane engulfed in flames at the airport as one's plane lands provokes a certain amount of thought. Much of that thought is less than cogent. Shit, that plane's on fire. I hope my plane doesn't catch fire. I hope the people got out okay. How did that plane catch fire? Shit, that plane's on fire. Is my plane on fire? When can I get off? Damn, I have another flight after this one.

Shit. That plane's on fire. 

The thing I find most startling a year later is that I didn't search for news of the fire after we got home. I searched just now, and I find no record of it at all. Was I so tired that I imagined the whole thing? Is a flaming plane, however small, so common that it passes without note these days? Was this just the ritual destruction of a plane at the end of its useful life?

Inquiring minds don't seem to have a clue just now.

Comments

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I think it was last year that Hal saw and heard a plane coming in toward SeaTac that had an explosion in the rear engine, and started belching flame. He did find mention of it, but it was minor, and the claim was that the plane was not actually on fire. It's possible that there's a positive force to suppress such information unless it's too big to ignore.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

April '09, written up here. Useful for the comments, where my report is elaborated a bit from the original post, mostly because the P-I was downplaying it.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Technically, I suppose an engine emitting flame is not the same thing as a plane on fire, but it's quite a finely-split hair.