While cruising at 40,000 feet, the airplane shuddered and Mr. Benson looked out the window. “Good lord!” he screamed, “one of the engines just blew up!”
Other passengers left their seats and came running over; suddenly the aircraft was rocked by a second blast as yet another engine exploded on the other side.
The passengers were in a panic now, and even the stewardesses couldn’t maintain order. Just then, standing tall and smiling confidently, the pilot strode from the cockpit and assured everyone that there was nothing to worry about.
His words and his demeanor seemed to make most of the passengers feel better, and they sat down as the pilot calmly walked to the door of the aircraft. There, he grabbed several packages from under the seats and began handing them to the flight attendants.
Each crew member attached the package to their backs.
“Say,” spoke up an alert passenger, “aren’t those parachutes?”
The pilot said they were. The passenger went on, “But I thought you said there was nothing to worry about?”
“There isn’t,” replied the pilot as a third engine exploded. “We’re going to get help.”
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. If you look out of the window on the port, or left, side of the aircraft you will see that the inner engine is on fire just below the fuel tanks in the wing. If you look out at the starboard, or right, wing you will observe that a widening crack has developed at the wing root, making it unlikely that the wing will remain attached to the fuselage. If you look down at the surface of the sea over which the aircraft is flying, you will notice a small orange dot. This is a life-raft. In it are your co-pilot, your flight engineer and myself.
This has been a recorded announcement.
I watched a man rush onto our plane at the last minute before takeoff. He spotted one of the few empty seats on board and silently sat down.
Later that night, though, he seemed bothered as the woman next to him fidgeted and got up frequently to use the bathroom. Still, the man never uttered a word. Feeling sorry for him, I quietly asked if he would like to move to another seat.
“My wife’s been annoying me for 50 years,” he said with a chortle. “There’s no sense in separating us now.”
As a passenger jet was flying over Arizona on a clear day, the co-pilot was providing his passengers with a running commentary about landmarks over the PA system.
“Coming up on the right, you can see the Meteor Crater, which is a major tourist attraction in northern Arizona. It was formed when a lump of nickel and iron, roughly 150 feet in diameter and weighing 300,000 tons, struck the earth at about 40,000 miles an hour, scattering white-hot debris for miles in every direction. The hole measures nearly a mile across and is 570 feet deep.”
From the cabin, a passenger was heard to exclaim, “Wow! It just missed the highway!”
The weary holiday traveler looked in disbelief at a bunch of mistletoe hanging above the luggage scale at the baggage check-in center… Turning to the attendant he asked, “Ok, I give up. Why is the mistletoe there above the luggage scale?” The attendant responded, “So you can kiss your luggage goodbye.”
