If you’re idea of fun is watching people die, then you can get your fix of morbidity by watching the video of the last seconds of Yeti Airlines Flight 691 from Katmandu to Pokhara before it disappeared behind a building, after which you could listen to a loud explosion as the plane smashed into the ground. I’m afraid to say I watched by way of an hypnotic loop on various news websites and it’s awful. One second, the AT42/72 appears to be flying normally, the next second the plane lurches to the left, out of shot and then there is carnage. I suppose I was drawn into watching in the same way that 21 years ago I watched footage of planes smashing in the World Trade Centre, over and over again. I couldn’t help watching it. Later, the realisation that people, and lots of them, have died in grim circumstances, brings back reality.
I doubt that watching the plane crash is much fun for nervous flyers, one of whom I used to be. During take off, I would clasp the arm rest or my partner’s hand and in the descent, I’d be desperate to leave the plane in one piece. Somehow today I have no fear at all. Perhaps it is old age, and the ‘whatever-will-be-will-be’ attitude that often accompanies it, but somehow I lost all my fear. And even the crash of the Yeti Airlines flight makes the slightest dent to my confidence.
Fortunately, it is highly unlikely that most of us will ever fly with Yeti Airlines since they’ve been banned from flying in Europe since 2013. And even if they were allowed to, their fleet comprises entirely of short range propellor planes. You’d have to be in Nepal to fly with them so if that’s on your bucket list of destinations, do bear that in mind.
Even during my nervous flying years I was an avid plane-spotter. I found and still find the sight and sound of a jet taking off as exciting as ever. Sometimes, it seems impossible for these huge objects to fly at all and even learning how planes achieve ‘lift’ with their wings. But they do and I’m happy to believe that the science works, in the same way as I believe the science that tells me smoking is not a good idea and vaccines are a good idea.
Let’s face it: no one goes to a bus station to watch buses leave. Yet there’s very little in it in terms of danger compared with plane travel. Planes are far more exciting to watch, all that power and noise and speed. I suppose you can look at trains in the same way. And of course, I’m a train-spotter too.
These days, planes don’t crash but for human error. An error in judgement, perhaps, or faulty maintenance. If a plane is falling to bits and crashes, that’s a man made disaster. If a plane crashes in bad weather, that’s human error for flying in it. So, we will doubtless find out what brought down Flight 691 quite soon. Doubtless, this disaster will soon be on the Air Crash Investigation show on the National Geographic Channel. Will I watch it? Of course I will. I don’t want to see people die but I want to know why they did, which will make it far less likely to happen again.
