Wednesday, August 03, 2005

In the news today

Air France flight 358 crashed upon landing at Toronto's Pearson International airport yesterday afternoon. No one died in the crash, which is a complete miracle. It's really impressive that the flight crew managed to get all 300+ passengers out of the plane before it burst into flames. As the panic factor must have been high, this was no easy task, and the crew is to be commended. I often count how many rows I am sitting away from the emergency exits, and sometimes I'll admit that my thoughts turn to calculating how many people sitting in front of me are likely to impede me getting off the plane in the event of a crash by panicking, blocking the way, deciding to grab something from the overhead bins first, or being too scared to use the emergency chute. I am convinced that I will be in a crash someday and will survive the initial impact, but will die because I couldn't get off the plane on time because someone stopped to grab their purse.

Some thoughts about this event:

1. RTE news sucks (Irish state TV channel). They announced in a news break that "a plane crashed in Toronto". They didn't say what flight or how, and then went on to a story about poverty in Niger. I was beside myself flipping the channels until I got all my info from Sky.

2. Fly Air France. Their crew is obviously top-notch. I flew a Continental code-share on an Air France plane coming back from Paris a few years ago, and they are great.

3. I am right to always want to sit at the back of the plane if I can't get an emergency exit row seat.

4. It's a really sad commentary about the state of the world today that when we hear about things like this, we express more relief that it was an accident instead of a terrorist incident before worrying about if there were any survivors.