…Like a Circle in a Spiral…
Imagine watching your own death and destruction live on TV. That was the experience of the 146 passengers and crew of JetBlue Flight 292 which avoided a tragic ending thanks to the incredible competence and heroic efforts of Pilot Scott Burke.
The CNN story based on the AP feed starts:
The airliner circled Southern California for hours, crippled by a faulty landing gear, while inside its cabin 140 passengers watched their own life-and-death drama unfolding on live television.
While satellite TV sets aboard JetBlue Flight 292 were tuned to news broadcasts, some passengers cried. Others tried to telephone relatives and one woman sent a text message to her mother in Florida attempting to comfort her in the event she died.
“It was very weird. It would’ve been so much calmer without” the televisions, Pia Varma of Los Angeles said after the plane skidded to a safe landing Wednesday evening in a stream of sparks and burning tires. No one was hurt.
Very little notice has been given to the fact reported in Toronto’s Globe and Mail that…
…this kind of incident had happened on Airbus 320s at least four times before. The most recent was in 1999, which resulted in a mandatory airworthiness directive to all airlines operating the aircraft to fix possible faults with O-ring seals in the landing-gear steering module.
This time the ultimate tragedy was avoided. A change in procedure or equipment or priority is needed to make sure there is not a next time. On the issue of live news feeds to the cabin so passengers can watch their own demise, there will undoubtedly be a long ongoing debate. My own feelings are mixed. I personally would want the most information I could get, but I also readily acknowledge there are others who not only would not want to know, but are not emotionally equipped to cope with the stark reality of such a situation.
My only trepidation is that just as the critical moment of my demise was about to occur, the network would break for a commercial to sell us insurance or tires or a Caribbean vacation cruise.
Head nod to Amba for the original link and thought for this post. And thanks to the amazing Richard for the name of the pilot; I have yet to find that factoid anywhere else. Which begs the question: How does Richard know? Did he make it up? Naaaahhhhh…
4 Comments so far
If I am facing imminent demise in a potential airliner crash, the very last thing in the world I want is @#$% television flickering in my vision field. Should I be so unlucky as to be in that position, there had better be an off button on my screen.
Nope, that’s his name, all right. He was on the front page of one of the New York tabloids.
For the record, you CAN push a button and make your Jet Blue mini-TV go dark and silent — though not those of your neighbors.
I’d probably chew down a xanax or two and say my Act of Contrition just in case….Whew! Thank God for the pilot’s competence is right!
I watched the last 45 minutes of the drama unfold and was thinking the same thing. Later on I heard a guy interviewed and he mentioned how he kept flicking back and forth between watching himself circle the skies before his possible death and Comedy Central. Now there’s a guy with some perspective!
When I was 18 I was in a 747 in which one of the engines caught on fire and we had to land in Toronto (the route was Montreal - Vancouver). I feel asleep on the flight while others panicked. Now I’m definitely *not* 18 and would be in the second group!