Airplane Crash Today?

Most of us try to bring along something to do if we are flying on an airplane. Especially if the trip is going to be a long one. Books are perfect for air travel since there are often long periods without interruptions.
No unwanted visitors to come knocking at the door.
No one knows the number of the “airfone” next you. You can't go out and do yard-work no matter how guilty you're feeling.
If you aren’t skilled at electronic games, there's nothing to do but just kick back and be bored by a book.
A book in hand can be useful even if you don't intend to read it.
You can intently stare at the pages in order to duck
unwanted conversations with the person(s) seated next to you.
If you choose to converse, then turn the book over and lay it across your lap as a flattering signal to the next door passenger that you are interested in what he/she has to say.
Another use for a good book on an airplane is that it can keep the attention of a nervous flier.
An exciting plot can save an alarmist from spotting rivets popping off of the wing or hearing thumping noises coming from the cargo hold or noticing that new vibration coming from the engines.
And dull books have their advantages too. After just two pages into Dickens' “BLEAKHOUSE”, most of us will be sleeping like a baby.
I know all these advantages but I still forgot to bring a book on my last airplane trip that landed me in five different airports before reaching my destination.
In the boarding area I looked around for anything to read, a local shopper paper, real estate brochures, old classified section of the newspaper, anything to read except the “crash card” in the seat-pocket.
Someone had abandoned a worn-out copy of the book “FLIGHT #116 IS DOWN!” written by Caroline Coon. I picked up the paperback and jammed it in my carry-on bag. Big mistake.
There are a certain category of books that should be banned in the carry-ons of air travelers for the same reasons that the airline's don't show in-flight episodes of the T.V. show “LOST” or that old movie “SNAKES” (on the airplane) and especially any of those old “AIRPORT” (pick a year) movies which were real or spoofs on air travel.
People like me who can calmly watch these kinds of video on the ground, tend to become unnerved while viewing the same in the air.
So it is with some books. I have learned the hard lesson that I should not read an airplane crash book while on a flight. One of those books was “PANDORA'S CLOCK”.
Several years ago I settled into my seat and began reading that same book which is novel which is about a Boeing 747 leaving Frankfurt, Germany and headed for the U.S. of A.
For those who aren’t old enough to have seen the T.V. movie made from PANDORA’S BOX, the plot starts with a passenger who has been unwittingly exposed to an Omega-class pathogen.
And with all the swine flu lately, communicable disease novels should be banned too, everywhere, including airplanes and doctors offices.
For those of you not steeped in bacterial-warfare, an Omega-class pathogen is a highly-contagious, fast-acting, deadly virus that begins with flu like symptoms but finishes you off in ways that makes the Andromeda strain look like mild colic.
In the book, an exposed passenger dies soon after take-off.
His symptoms seem to indicate a heart-attack but who knows with these Omega-class pathogens?
All the passengers could have been exposed just by breathing the air on board.
The man next to me coughed.
I sat my book down and listened.
More coughs.
Everybody on the plane seemed to be coughing.
I felt a tickle in my own throat.
In the book, this 747 and its possibly lethal passengers are refused landing by all the countries of the world.
And to add to their troubles, an outlaw fighter pilot chased them down and shot missiles at their beleaguered airliner.
I looked out the window.
No attack planes in sight.
But they wouldn't be flying off the wing, would they?
No, like all good fighter pilots, they'll come from above and behind. You never see ‘em. Then boom!.
Now I hear a faint whistling sound from the rear of the plane.
The doomed 747 sneaks a landing in Iceland.
They get some fuel but can't dump their garbage.
The ending will keep you traveling on nothing but 747's for the rest of your flying life. The author must have stock in some old 747’s.
I can forgive the author for basing his plot on the structural soundness of the Boeing 747 (a safe landing with two engines blown off and missile hit in the tail.)
I can even forgive him for making the senior pilot a quick-thinking-nerves-of-steel-take-charge hero who gets the virginal (no remarks please) flight attendant at the end of the story.
But I can't forgive the author describing the stench of the airplane lavatories that had been used by 250 people for 48 hours.
His vivid portrayal kept me from using the airplane’s bathroom for my entire three and a half hour flight. And that was probably the last time that I could have used the on-board toilet without paying a fee.
Descriptions of overflowing toilets is too much, Mr. Nance.
I'd rather take a missile in the tail.
So back to my latest salvaged book “Flight #116 Is Down!”. This book told the story of a teen-age girl who experienced a 747 crashing on her estate, while her parents are gone out of town! If the story was more real, the protagonist teen-ager would have been away from her home, wearing a French hooker outfit trying to gain entry into taverns using fake I.D. She should not have been home for the plane crash.
Back to the book. Hundreds of emergency workers, life savers and aircraft experts converge on the crash site which is smack dab in this teen-age girl’s back yard.
There are so many gruesome details about the flight #116 crash fatalities that I had to set the book down until my hands quit trembling. While the book was resting on my knee, I thought of my own back yard, barely big enough for a small prop plane to crash. We have a koi pond in the backyard too small for Sully Sullenberg to float a paper airplane. Any crash on our little estate will have consequences for those of us living in the house.
So now, thanks to “Flight #116 Is Down!”, I am terrified while flying in the air and when back on the ground, I am going to spend lots of hours at the tavern...out of harm's way.