plane wreck

plane wreck

fiction
edward w pritchard

The unthinkable had happened. For reasons known only to him our pilot had locked himself in the cabin and was threatening to take down our plane. We passengers were 79, Orlando back to Baltimore, the 11:07 AM flight. The pilot had flown this route Orlando to Baltimore maybe four hundred times but today he decided to kill 85 people in a few minutes by crashing us in the Mountains of North Carolina. Actually he had already killed once, the co-pilot was dead in the cabin, two of the flight attendants saw the body and now we sat in terror waiting for what was next. To calm us down, to return to normalcy for a few minutes, the flight attendants were serving us a very light meal, soda and chips or peanuts. As they worked at the cart passing out our food they talked about the Captain to each other, for they would die soon and the flight attendants became more concerned with their own problems than customer service. They began to talk about the pilot securely barricaded in the cockpit and why he might have snapped like this. They talked right in front of us. Definitely against company policy.

The Pilot was a good man. They didn't know him well but several of the flight attendants had flown with him maybe fifty times on this route, there or back to Orlando and another fifteen times, Baltimore to New York City. Once a  Fight Attendant, Penny, she had called herself in the seat belt demonstration, had been stranded with our Pilot in a snowstorm in Washington DC Dulles airport; I heard her say to the other attendant as she passed me my Pepsi. The pilot had given Penny the attendant his coat as a blanket and hadn't stared at her as she lay akimbo in an uncomfortable seat in her short flight uniform. He was a gentleman, married she thought and she had never seen him make a pass at one of the attendants. Pilot is a stressful job one attendant had said.

As the attendants move up the row of seats to serve other customers I realized reluctantly I had a few moments to live. The pilot had told us on the intercom about five minutes ago he would take us down, in ten minutes and he suggested we pray and make our amends with God. Of course many passengers were squawking on cell phones, some with wives and loved ones, but most with business partners or customers; arranging final business details should they be dead soon.

My attention was distracted out the window to my right by two jets approaching rapidly. I am ex-military; of course, they were air force fighters coming to look over us.

The pilot is talking again. He is apologizing to us. As he began the rapid descent to our deaths I watched calmly as the air force jets fired two white hot missile at us and I continued to watch intently as the forward missile slammed into the front of the plane near where the pilot sat. I imagine that policy is if a hijacked plane must crash it's better if it is shot down by our military than if a rogue terrorist successfully causes a loss of human life and destruction of property. Not a bad policy really, I thought, as my last memory of existence, I am ex- military myself.