(Passengers, top right, subdue a man identified as Rageh Almurisi (not seen, since he is getting his ass kicked by the traveling public) on board an American Airlines flight headed to San Francisco on Sunday, in a photo shot by another passenger. Photo Andrew Wai via AP.)
There are thousands of people aloft this morning, headed all sorts of places. I am just back on the ground, personally, and contemplating traveling light for the next lift-off next week.
A pal has a kid somewhere around Flight Level 33, headed for Iceland, and my pal Dee is getting ready to launch for Sweden to attend a family function. At any given moment, we all have someone we care about up there someplace in the heavens, nearer my God to thee.
If you do the math, it actually turns out that given around 22,000 commercial jets in the inventory, and with a load factor of only 75% occupancy and a 30% utilization rate, you could have as many as 700,000 people in the air all the time. It is a curious thought, don’t you think?
I mean, that is the equivalent of almost seven sold-out Michigan Stadiums hurtling around the planet. I take a certain comfort in the odds that most flights are thoroughly routine and mostly boring.
Not always, though. I was musing on that while standing in the security line at DTW the other day. I told you about the hassle of trading airlines to accommodate a cancelled flight, and won’t belabor the point that standing in ine to be poked and prodded is a general indignity. You know that already.
The point is that it doesn’t work. Not with the airlines, and not with deranged Majors with semi-automatic pistols, not with any of the successful or nearly successful terror attacks. Every is a little hinky since the bin Laden execution, with good reason, but here is something that happened the day before I went flying the last time.
It was not covered in the alleged Mainstream Media, which appears to be paralyzed by some sort of bizarre political correctness, but rather by a local San Francisco television station.
It was on American Airline flight 1561, and you can look up the story for yourself, if you wish, but here is the story, which is about a Yemeni man shrieking “Allahu Akbar!” at the top of his lungs more than 30 times as he rushed the cockpit door, impacting it hard, twice. Here is the lead from the AP story that failed to make the Times this morning, or any other morning, for that matter:
“SAN FRANCISCO — The passengers sat stunned as they watched a man walk quickly toward the front of American Airlines Flight 1561 as it was descending toward San Francisco. He was screaming and then began pounding on the cockpit door.
“I kept saying to myself: ‘What’s he doing? Does he have a bomb? Is he armed?”‘ passenger Angelina Marty said.”
We have all been there these days, one of the first things to do after stuffing the sport coat in the overhead bin to properly wrinkle, is figure out who is sitting around you and what you might have to do to beat the crap out of them if they start acting weird. I mean, no one has stopped a hijacking, or tried to, except the passengers, and you have to be ready.
As it happened, the Boeing 737 landed safely, and Mr. Almurisi was charged (on the ground with “interfering with a flight crew,” which gratifyingly is still a federal offense. During the scuffle, Mr. Almurisi sustained some bruises and was checked at a hospital before being transported to San Mateo County Jail, according to a spokesman for airport police, who profess mystification at the motive for the incident.
Could he have wanted more pretzels?
If you will permit me the minor blasphemy, “Jesus Christ, WTF?”
Can TSA get it’s head out of it’s collective butt? We know exactly who the threat is.
God is great, my ass.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra