Icarus Would Have Frozen To Death Before His Wings Melted
As a Platinum Elite frequent flyer on an airline whose mechanics are likely to strike the night before I have to get on one of its planes, this story about the Cypriot airliner that suddenly lost cabin pressure gives me a bit of a chill. What a bizarre tale this is turning out to be. Can you imagine yourself as the only conscious passenger lurching into the cockpit, lugging the co-pilot’s body off the controls, sitting down in the left seat and trying to figure out what to do next?
Not a pilot myself, I’d have to wrack my brain for ideas. My only relevant prior experience would be the old DOS-based Microsoft Flight Simulator, which I never managed to land successfully at Chicago’s old Meigs Field. Even on the tiny green screen of my old Compaq “sewing machine” luggable, the cracks spider-webbing through the windshield on impact were unsettling.
And why would the left seat be empty in the first place? Where was the captain (whose body has yet to be found)? In the lavatory with a flight attendant? Could a flailing stiletto heel have punctured the skin of the aircraft, causing the depressurization? If a “black box” recorded that activity, I’ll be landing with an awfully full bladder from now on.
I find this picture of the tail particularly haunting, with its combination of resurrected antiquity and fallen modernity:
