i wonder if there were uninjured people who were like "gosh dangit!" and hopped the next available flight to vegas
I was supposed to land in SFO yesterday. Re-routed to Sactown because our plane was running out of fuel circling. Bus to Frisco. Lost a suitcase somewhere along the way. Waited in line 5 hours last night with wife and 2 boys to book a new flight to London. They got us on a 19 hour journey via Tacoma and Dulles on Monday. But the good news is I got the last room at a Howard Johnson and we all got to share a king size bed instead of spending the night at the airport. So everything's coming up Milhouse. Still, though, I feel bad for the people on that flight. I had a bad day, but plenty had worse.
I had a "hard landing" after our pilot declared an emergency at ORD. United gave me a $250 voucher for my troubles. While I appreciate their concern for my welfare, and I'm happy to spend the $250, I'm not sure what to think about it. Either a) pilot did a helluva job getting us on the ground, so give the bonus to him instead of me, or b) my life is worth much more than $250.
And it was evil evil regulations that saved lives. Those evil job killing freedom killing regulations. Because of regulations that were passed after some really horrific crashes, airline seats now have to be more firmly anchored and there is another layer of flame proofing. Also, crews must learn to evacuate in seconds. Without these evil federal regulations that kill freedom* experts say that passengers would have been crushed by flying airplane seats and the plane would have been an inferno. *except vaginas, which need to be thoroughly regulated because
Actually there is a correlation between Korean pilots and a higher likelihood of crashing compared to a lot of other nationalities. The theory being that a co-pilot or other crew member (subordinate) would be very reticent to correct the pilot (the boss) even if they knew something wasn't quite right because of the cultural mores surrounding social station and shame. Not to say that happened in this case.
