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

[e-bourne.livejournal.com]

Flying can seem so much scarier than driving. Yet more people die from car accidents than from plane accidents. Even when bad things happen to planes, usually people get out OK. Of course, we -really- bad things happen, we all hear about those unlucky people.

I suspect it's because we feel like we have more control in our cars. We have no control in a plane.

Total spit-balling middle of Friday afternoon speculation on my part.

I'm glad your plane was not, and never has been, on fire.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure. Of course, we may have control of the cars we drive, but we never have control of the cars around us, and those loonies could do anything at any moment.