Passengers pray as jetliner pops a hole

[DavidDvorkin]

At least, that's what the headline says at this link: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/14/us.jetliner.damaged/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

But when you read the story, it only mentions one passenger and her children. Another passenger -- a cleric, in fact -- is quoted as praising the flight crew and saying nothing about prayer. The headline makes you think that they were all praying, or most of them.

[laconicsax]

1. The cabin depressurized at 30,000 ft., Glory Be!

[DavidDvorkin]

2. Human error caused the hole

But God saved the passengers!

If God had prevented the hole from happening, it would have denied us our free will. Er, somehow.

[laconicsax]

3. Minor point--investigators don't know the cause.

But, whenever there is an unknown cause, an Abrahamic god shaped gap opens.

[jmm]

4. At least the pilot wasn't praying

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/court-in-italy-convicts-pilot-who-prayed-before-crash/


This sort of reminds me of recently when I was watching some true crime basic cable program. A young man was hit by a motor cycle and dragged to death but one person involved in the case credited God with making the license plate fall off which helped them find the guilty party. If God wasn't so busy tearing the plate off maybe he could've focused on something more important like the young man's life :eyes:.

[onager]

5. Once my seat-mate asked me to pray with her...

...before our flight took off.

I told her that I wasn't religious.

Also said that when I'm hurtling thru the air in a complicated metal tube, I'm more worried about physics than metaphysics.

She left me alone for the rest of the flight.

This should make a good future episode of "Air Emergency." Which always struck me as a remarkably religion-free program, considering the subject. Prayer is very seldom mentioned unless it is relevant to the crash. e.g., the absolutely horrifying story of EgyptAir Flight 990.

When you have time, here's a great detailed article on that crash, written by a former airline pilot:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200111/langewiesche

[rexcat]

6. Many years ago flying from Miami, FL to

Cincinnati, OH on Delta we were 15 minutes into the flight on an MD-88 and one of the two engines self-destructed. There was a loud bang and the entire airplane shuttered. The person sitting next to me said "Damn, we just lost an engine. This is the second time this has happened to me in the last 4 months." Several minutes later the pilot announced that indeed we had lost one of our engines. We would be making an emergency landing in Fort Meyers and there was nothing to be concerned about. Funny thing was prayer was not even on my mind at the time. I was thinking about my wife and the kids. I got to talk to the pilot in Atlanta and his only comment on the incident was it was just like being in a simulator!