To Ride a Plane -- Career Choices

In recent years great efforts have been made  to force us to accept the relinquishing of some of our freedoms, under the threat of terrorism, which is leveled at us much more by those who are supposed to be preventing it and so protecting us, than it is by the terrorists themselves.   But despite that, I would not be surprised if instead, the main concerns  that people have while riding an airliner now are just the same as they were before September 11, 2001, and that is the state of affairs up in the cockpit, coupled with the condition of the plane.   Is the crew up there on the job and strictly concerned with getting everyone including themselves back on the ground in one piece, or are they up there doing crossword puzzles or knitting, saturated with confidence in these modern machines that are so sophisticated that allegedly they are able to fly themselves?

Not long ago I read a powerfully vivid account of a cockpit conversation that took place between a male pilot and his female copilot, before icing overwhelmed their plane, a medium-sized airliner, and it stalled and then quickly crashed into the ground, I think in New York,  ending the lives of all aboard.

No, the chatter had no taint of any romantic interests.   Instead it was all business, except that it wasn't the kind of business commonly associated with piloting a plane, especially in inclement weather where icing is a problem.  It is my belief that the copilot was happy that she had been paired with a pilot in whom she had total confidence when it came to operating the plane, amd also she had sensed that he was a gentleman who was actually interested in hearing everything she had to say.  And what she had to say was mainly about  her career choices that she would be making in the future.

Once in a while they would also talk about icing on planes and their past experiences with it, but those mentions were infrequent and  quite casual, a chilling thing because, knowing how this turned out, you also knew that minute by minute, despite what the pilot and the copilot had to be noticing out of the corners of their eyes as supplied by their equipment indicators and the view through the windshields,  conditions outside the plane were steadily getting more and more serious.   

The last seconds, the last words of the recorded conversation are among the most gripping I've ever heard or read, and they were all spoken by the copilot.  She had at last realized, first, that the plane, however sophisticated, could not fly itself after ice had taken it into its deadly grip.   And though she most likely had no time to become aware, at the crucial moment the pilot in whom she had such confidence and who was such a genuinely nice, understanding person, turned out not to quite understand the  situation into which they had drifted.  In panic he  pushed or pulled the stick in some direction that was counter to what is supposed to be done instinctively when a plane is fast losing altitude in such dire conditions.

It is probably just as well that I can't remember the copilot's final words, spoken in  complete horror and realization -- a statement that, like her life and the lives  of all the others around her, was suddenly cut off in its midst, and so the question of her career choices was settled for all time. 

The fates must have decided on this outcome.  Why else had they allowed her to become so focused on choices other than the ones that the two of them needed to make to finish the flight safely?   Like the pilot, she was otherwise an experienced pilot in her own right.   

Maybe she had somehow sensed that a crucial decision on her future direction had already been made, else she wouldn't have been so tempted to keep returning to the subject in spite of all, just as if she was back in her warm apartment chatting with a friend, another airline worker, instead of at the wheel of a plane in flight high in the air, in some tough Winter weather.

The only good thing about this is that mercifully she was  completely unaware of  what that decision was or how it had been set into motion for her from the moment that she had boarded that plane, though naturally even with the presence of mercy, nothing turned out to be good in any way for all the other aspects of her well-being or for anybody or anything else involved.