The Stranger Across the Aisle – I

Reflections after watching a documentary on the crash of United Airlines 232.

Years ago I watched a television program about a plane crash in the Midwest. I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but it involved a commercial airliner. An engine exploded shortly after takeoff. The plane was on fire, billowing smoke, falling out of the sky.

They played black-box snippets of the crew’s conversation with the control tower, and the crew was looking for a place to land, any place to land, preferably a runway. It was clear to all that it was going to end disastrously, and now air traffic control and the crew were only focused on preventing unnecessary fatalities on the ground.

I was struck by the captain’s grace under pressure and his sense of humor even in the face of overwhelming catastrophe. He said something genuinely funny to the men in the control tower, a dark, black flash of gallows humor. The captain was so completely brave, in that matter-of-fact brave man way, where the brave man doesn’t have the slightest idea how brave he actually is, where later on he se…