It's strange how a scary but not deadly airplane accident in Canada can make me start a mental review of the whereabouts of my family.

When that happened yesterday, my daughter and grand daughter were returning from England on another airline. My daughter-in-law and grandson were leaving for home, but we didn't know if they were leaving from France or Germany. We didn't even know for sure which airline. My sister and her husband were in New England and might have strayed into Canada. My other sister and her whole clan had recently returned from Scotland, and my son and his step-son were driving to Quebec.

My pilot son-in-law was at home and, unlike 9-11, so were we. Who knows where all of the cousins might have been.

We all got a good lesson in the importance of crew training. The pilots were very suddenly caught up in a potentially deadly situation, but somehow got that thing stopped, still relatively intact. Then the flight attendants, with help from passengers and possibly the flight deck crew, got about 300 people out of that plane in less than two minutes. The next time you are on a jumbo jet with that many people, look around and notice what a big crowd that is.

I sat and watched that burning, exploding airplane on TV, certain that nobody had gotten out. Sometimes it's nice to be wrong.
Howard
P.S. This is the second time I have typed this. The first time, while previewing the message, I hit "enter" instead of scrolling down and the whole thing disappeared. This time I used Word. It happens like that a lot, but only on long posts. I have no explanation