Monday, 05 March 2012
Since I’m working on my minor in history at Hamline, I guess I should devote a minor amount of this blog to noting anniversaries of notable events in human history. That, and I’m obsessed with commemorating this sort of stuff, anyway.
It was on this day in 1980 that a fully booked passenger airplane en route to Chicago met up with a triple threat: inclement weather, incapacitated crew, and a bomb threat. While still in mid-air, pundits gave up the passengers for dead, and multiple news outlets declared there was no chance of a safe landing. In an unbelievable turnaround, however, one of the passengers, a former army pilot during Vietnam, with the help of the two flight attendants, wrested the bomb from the would-be terrorist, navigated the storm, and brought the plane in for a safe, albeit bumpy, landing. Though the injuries were many, no lives were lost in the landing.
The pilot went on to become a space shuttle test pilot and married one of the flight attendants. A documentary about the event can be found AT THIS LINK.
Of the reluctant passenger’s rise to heroism that day, one of the passengers memorably stated: “The bro was on. Didn’t flip. But the folks was fleeking man, hey. And the pilot was laid to the bone, home.”
But I can’t do his words justice. Just watch the clip: