Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Notes from 30,000 feet
As I write this, I’m flying in a Boeing 737 on my way to Sacramento to see me mum for Christmas. I cannot resist of course, making a few observations about air travel while I’m here.
I wonder, will I get in trouble if I type the word “terrorist?� “Bomb?� “Big, fiery explosion with many, many body parts and death to the infidels?�
One can’t help but think about death while flying aboard a Southwest Airlines flight. It’s not just the peanuts, it’s a cultural pall of death that we’ve wrapped around our airlines. It didn’t start with September Eleventh either, but has been around ever since there’s been air disasters. Before I get on an airplane, I think about who will take care of my cats if I die, and what a pity it would be if I perished and never finished my novels. Yet I don’t have those thoughts when I climb into a car, although statistically, my chances of dying in a car crash are much higher.
It would be easy to blame the media, saying that they sensationalize airplane crashes beyond their weight. But that’s only partly true. The fact is, that airplanes are so damn lethal…
“PRAISE ALLAH!�
(I bet the stewardesses can read that praise Allah… I wonder if I should erase it…)
Airplanes don’t kill people, smashing into things like the ground and Pentagons is what kills people. And we passengers are all trusting our lives to a chain of fallible humanity, any link of which could fail. We are at the mercy of imperfect technology and gravity. The lethality of the combination is humbling… or perhaps terrifying is the word.
Were I sitting in a skinny easy chair in the park, I wouldn’t worry about my safety. However, if every man, woman and child in that park was carrying a loaded firearm, I might begin to feel a smidge tense because the potential lethality of my place in the skinny easy chair would be much greater.
“Death to the Western Infidel Dogs!�
I’m not a worrier in general. I think flight is great… we need more flight. We need flying cars and jet packs and all the things that the Jetsons promised us. And just because something, such as human flight, is not natural, doesn’t mean it’s bad. I just think the bathrooms should be bigger.
