Pardon me but I seem to have slept and woken up stupid. I now believe a plane went missing.
And to be told that a plane went missing is the equivalent of telling me someone flattened Table Mountain and no one even saw him do it.
Now I admit I'd be much more thrilled with the prospects of the flattening, but the disappearance of a plane with 228 people on board is a tad hard to swallow.
As such I will start by delivering my condolences to affected families as optimism is no longer an option.
I'll confess right away that I have never worked in aviation, don't have many friends flying planes but I have played a few airplane flight simulator games. So maybe I do have some level of gravitas to ask what on earth happened to that Air France Airbus.
I mean even the name Air Bus succinctly reiterates just how hard to miss such a disappearance could be.
Now I assume that the average rocket scientist at the airport's switchboard has a direct communication channel with the said plane.
Furthermore I don't think planes just follow any odd undetermined path to wherever they are going. Else we'd have to get robots and air traffic officers up there to control those so-called air busses from crashing into one another.
So, I assume we agree that each plane follows a well co-ordinated, pre-determined flight plan to its destination. As such estimation can be made as to which areas of the route experienced severe storms and perhaps also determine at approximately what time the communication signals went down and how far the plane was then.
So again, I ask: Where on earth is that airbus?
The radar trail should have been followed already. An exact estimation of where about it dropped should be clearer than night and day. But no, now any chances of finding survivors on that wreck are completely gone.
Maybe I did wake up stupid because this is just becoming harder and harder to fathom. I even find it harder to believe how, in this day and age, with so much weather predicting gizmos and Derrick van Dammes out there, an airborne titanic could have gone straight into a fierce storm.
No, thank you. Next time a pilot says "we're experiencing a little bit of turbulence", best you start asking around for parachutes and revising how the emergency door gets opened. Clearly these air buses weren't built for storms.
Get published on MyNews24 by sending your letter, story or column to us.
Send us your news photos
Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on MyNews24 have been independently written by members of News24's community. The views of users published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24. News24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.
- News24
Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on MyNews24 have been independently written by members of News24's community. The views of users published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24. News24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.